Barbara Stanley

Barbara H. Stanley (August 13, 1949 – January 25, 2023) was an American psychologist, researcher, and suicidologist who served as Professor of Psychology at Columbia University and the Director of Suicide Prevention Training at New York State Office of Mental Health. She also served as Research Scientist at the New York State Psychiatric Institute.

Stanley was best known for the Stanley-Brown Safety Planning Intervention, which she developed in 2008 together with Gregory K. Brown. It has since been adopted by hospitals and mental health clinics across the U.S. as a method for suicide prevention. She was the chair and later member of the Committee on Human Research at the American Psychological Association and a standing member of the National Institute of Health, Center for Scientific Review's Adult Psychopathology and Disorders of Aging study section.

While suicide prevention contracts had been in use for some time, Stanley's research has proven their efficacy in dramatically decreasing the risk of suicide in post-discharge period and is said to have "helped shift the focus of suicide research toward practical, concrete and timely interventions."

Death A resident of Chatham Borough, New Jersey, Stanley died on January 25, 2023, at a hospice in Scotch Plains, New Jersey, of ovarian cancer. She was survived by her children, Melissa Morris and Thomas Stanley, and siblings John Hrevnack, Michael Hrevnack and Joanne Kennedy.