Reframing Suicide as a Shared Social Responsibility in Korea

The Korea Society is pleased to announce that the ninth annual Sherman Family Korea Emerging Scholar Lecture Awardee is Dr. Peter Na, assistant professor of psychiatry at Yale School of Medicine.  In his lecture, Reframing Suicide as a Shared Social Responsibility in Korea, he casts suicide not as an individual failure or “extreme choice (극단적 선택),” but as a systemic and cultural crisis requiring a coordinated national response. Drawing on his experience as a psychiatrist, public health researcher, and mental health advocate, Dr. Na examines the scale and societal costs of suicide in Korea and analyzes key structural drivers such as academic and workplace pressures, poverty and isolation among older adults, and the pervasive stigma surrounding mental illness and treatment.