May Mental Health Awareness Month: An Interview With Jonathan Singer, PhD

Jonathan B. Singer, Ph.D., LCSW is a Professor of Social Work at Loyola University Chicago, Past-President of the American Association of Suicidology and coauthor of the 2015 Routledge text, Suicide in Schools: A Practitioner’s Guide to Multi-level Prevention, Assessment, Intervention, and Postvention.

Jonathan is a leader in the field of suicide awareness and prevention who has been a member and former president of the American Association of Suicidology since 2005.  It is through his passion and commitment to the field of social work and suicide prevention that we see a lasting impact via education, social media, and support to communities across the U.S.

He is a two-time winner of the National Association of Social Workers Media Award (2012 and 2016). He was a 2014 Visiting Scholar at Fordham University, the 2017 Lucille N. Austin Scholar at Columbia University, and the 2018 Distinguished Lecturer at Weber State University.

Dr. Singer is a well-regarded international speaker who has given hundreds of continuing education workshops, keynote addresses, and presentations on youth suicide, ethics, technology, adolescent development and attachment-based family therapy in the USA, Latin America, Asia, and Europe.

He is the author of over 75 publications and his research has been featured in national and international media outlets like NPR, BBC, Fox, Time Magazine, and The Guardian. His co-authored article with Arielle Sheftall and John Ackerman about the news media’s reporting on the suicide deaths of Kate Spade and Anthony Bourdain won the prestigious 2019 SDX prize for research on journalism. He is an NASW Expert, Healio Psychiatry Peer Perspective Board member, and on several national youth advisory boards including Sandy Hook Promise, JED Foundation, Suicide Prevention Resource Center, and the National Suicide Prevention Lifeline.

A pioneer in the integration of technology and social work, Dr. Singer is an original member of the online suicide prevention social media community #SPSM, past-Treasurer for the international human services Information Technology association (http://husita.org/), co-lead for the Social Work Grand Challenge initiative “Harness Technology for Social Good” (https://grandchallengesforsocialwork.org/harness-technology-for-social-good/), and member of CSWE’s Technology Advisory Group.

Dr. Singer is the founder and host of the award-winning Social Work Podcast (www.socialworkpodcast.com), the first podcast by and for social workers. The Social Work Podcast has over 40,000 followers on social media, listeners in 208 countries and territories, and a million podcast episode downloads per year. He lives in Evanston, IL with his wife and three children and can be found on Twitter as @socworkpodcast and Facebook at facebook.com/swpodcast.