Trine Madsen receives the award for her important contributions within register-based research on mental illnesses, infections, traumatic brain trauma and deployments to war zones as risk factors for suicide. She has, among others, demonstrated that the time after discharge from a psychiatric hospital in Denmark is a high-risk period for suicide, which ought to be targeted by interventions.
Trine Madsen is an international expert in trajectory analyses and has studied the development of suicidal thoughts among patients with bipolar disorder, depression disorders and schizophrenia in USA and Holland. She has also helped set up a large intervention study aimed at preventing suicide after discharge from a psychiatric hospital.
The Nordentoft Award was set up by the Association for Education and Research on Suicide Prevention to mark Professor Merete Nordentoft’s great contributions within suicide prevention research in Denmark. The objective of the award is to promote suicide prevention and to make the efforts within this field visible to a broader audience.
As both research and preventive efforts are important and needed disciplines to secure reductions in the numbers of suicide, the Nordentoft Award is every second year given to a practitioner and in other years to a researcher.