Steven Stack
Steven Stack is an Adjunct Professor of Psychiatry, and Full Professor of Criminal Justice, Wayne State University, Detroit, MI. He is also Director of the Center for Suicide Research, a registered non profit corporation in Troy, Michigan. Dr. Stack received his PhD degree in Sociology from the University of Connecticut in 1976. He has previously held appointments at Penn State University, Auburn University, Indiana University (Indianapolis), and Alma College. He was Chair of the Criminal Justice Department at Wayne State University, 1994-2001. He has served as Secretary of the American Association of Suicidology and President of the Pennsylvania Sociological Society. He is currently on the editorial board of Suicide and Life Threatening Behavior and Archives of Suicide Research.
Dr. Stack is the author of over two hundred and sixty articles and chapters, and most of these are on risk and protective factors for suicide. Major streams of work include social correlates of suicide acceptability, the relationship between family integration and suicide, religion’s protective effect on suicide, analysis of media influences (copycat suicide), musical subcultures and suicide, and occupation and suicide risk. Dr. Stack, with over 2,480 citations tabulated in Social Sciences Citations Index, is the world’s most highly cited sociologist in the field of Suicidology. He has received three national awards for his work on suicide. He was the recipient of the Edwin Shneidman Award in 1985 given annually by the American Association of Suicidology to a young contributor to research, and received their Louis Dublin Award (for lifetime contributions to suicidology) in April 2003. In 2004 he received the IG-Noble Prize in Medicine (with James Gundlach) given annually at Harvard University for work that has a humorous bent but also makes a serious contribution to medical science (for papers on Country Music and suicide). Most recently (2008) he received the Donal MacNamara Award given annually by the Academy of Criminal Justice Science for the best article of the year published in their 3 journals.
Email: aa1051@wayne.edu