CHENNAI: Suicide helpline SNEHA’s founder Dr Lakshmi Vijayakumar was awarded the 2015 Ringel Award in Suicidology. The award was presented to Dr Lakshmi in Montreal in the Biennal Congress of the IASP.
The Ringel Service Award was instituted in 1995 and honours the late Professor Erwin Ringel, the founding President of the Association and this award is for distinguished service in the field of suicidology, among those actively involved in the practice of suicide prevention and crisis intervention and its dissemination;acknowledged as a national initiator or leader in the field and whose main work is in suicide prevention and/or crisis intervention. The last recipient of this award was Ekeberg from Norway in 2013.“She is a woman of substance, of high integrity and with a heart of gold. She has received several awards and honours, but it is a pleasure on behalf of the Ringel Service Award Committee to announce that Dr Lakshmi Vijayakumar is the 2015 winner of the Ringel Service Award,” said Lars Mehlum, Chair, Ringel Service Award.
A woman who has dedicated her life to suicide prevention, she is a psychiatrist by profession and her efforts have spanned from the clinical context with her patients through working with NGOs and complex organized prevention programmes at the local, national and the global level. She is the founder of ‘SNEHA’ which she established nearly 30 years ago and through which she has developed many intervention and outreach programmes for suicidal people.