Harvard University’s Nock Lab to Uncover the Early Warning Signs of Adolescent Suicidal Behavior Via a Major Grant from Jake Collective
Landmark Study Will Provide Clinicians and Hospitals with a Revolutionary Diagnostic Toolkit, Identifying Specific Cognitive and Emotional Traits that Elevate Risk
NEW YORK, NY,September 10, 2026 — Jake Collective, the nonprofit foundation and LLC impact investment engine dedicated to improving the lives of neurodivergent young people, has awarded a $1.75 million grant for a landmark study by Nock Lab at Harvard University. A multidisciplinary team of researchers will assess the underlying risk factors that lead young people toward suicide. Led by Harvard psychology professor Dr. Matthew Nock, the three-year initiative will develop a next-generation testing regimen, phenotyping physical, emotional, and cognitive indicators that a suicidal impulse may well have become life-threatening.
Suicide has become the second leading cause of death for youth and young adults, according to the CDC. On average, every 90 minutes, an American between the ages of 15 and 24 will die by suicide.* The suicide risk for neurodivergent adolescents and young adults is far higher than that of their neurotypical peers. According to a 2022 study published in The Journal of Attention Disorders, college students with ADHD attempted suicide at a rate nearly two-and-a-half times higher than students without ADHD.** A 2024 Autism journal study found that one third of autistic people aged 16 to 21 had experienced thoughts of harming themselves with the intention of ending their lives.***
“Despite the enormity of this crisis, the field does not have a brief, clinic-ready battery that measures risk factors in adolescents receiving acute psychiatric care,” notes Dr. Matthew K. Nock, Edgar Pierce Professor of Psychology, Harvard University. “With Jake Collective, we aim to establish a diagnostic battery for adolescents—including those who are neurodivergent. This work promises to yield not only scientific insights, but also a comprehensive assessment platform adaptable for future use in outpatient, inpatient and other hospital intake settings.”
Nock Lab has and continues to engage in the largest and most comprehensive survey of adult suicidal behavior ever undertaken—shedding crucial light upon how suicidal behaviors develop, how to predict them, and how to prevent them from being acted upon.
In this new study funded by Jake Collective, Dr. Nock’s team will test a set of tools that they hope will be effective in assessing suicide risk in youth aged 12 to 18—providing clinicians with potential treatment targets that could help to improve interventions. In addition, Nock Lab will establish assessment criteria that capture measures of neurodivergence, to ensure that neurodivergent young people are properly identified and represented in the study.
Team members will concentrate their real-time research on young people already admitted to hospitals for suicide intervention, treatment and observation—a cohort encompassing the most acute adolescent cases.
Embedded in Nock Lab’s research plan is an accelerated timetable for delivering potentially lifesaving results. “It typically takes as many as 17 years to translate research findings into useful clinical practice,” Dr. Nock observes. “One of our primary motivations for pursuing this project is to significantly shorten that timeline.”
Melissa Floren Filippone, Jake Collective’s CEO, shares this sense of urgency. “Today, when kids with suicidal ideation go to the ER, the existing criteria used to assess the severity of their condition often turn out to be as arbitrary as a coin toss,” Floren Filippone says. “Through our initiative with Nock Lab, we will give clinicians a new set of diagnostic tools that reduces guesswork in favor of research-based accuracy—allowing them to better evaluate who is in danger and why, who should be admitted and who may be ready to be released, and what interventions may prove most effective.”
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About Dr. Matthew Nock and Nock Lab
Matthew K. Nock, Ph.D. is Edgar Pierce Professor of Psychology at Harvard University and Professor of Epidemiology at Harvard’s T.H. Chan School of Public Health. He is director of Harvard’s Nock Lab, which uses a range of methods to advance the understanding, prediction, and prevention of suicide. Dr. Nock has served as a consultant and scientific advisor to the National Institutes of Health, the World Health Organization’s World Mental Health Survey Initiative, the American Psychological Association, and the American Psychiatric Association DSM-5 Childhood and Adolescent Disorder Work Group.
About Jake Collective
Jake Collective is a nonprofit foundation and impact investment engine dedicated to improving the lives of neurodivergent young people. By building a flywheel of scaled data, capital, clinical care, and human understanding, the organization works to transform how neurodivergence is seen and supported. Jake Collective is privately funded and is not soliciting or accepting donations at this time. For more information visit jakecollective.org.
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Media Contacts
Michele Schimmel
Head of Marketing & Communications
michele@jakecollective.org
Nock Lab
Matthew Nock
nock@wjh.harvard.edu
*Drapeau, Christopher W. & McIntosh, John (February 2026) U.S.A. Suicide: 2024 Official Final Data (sourced from CDC/NCHS’s WONDER, and distributed by the National Council for Suicide Prevention)
*Brown N, McLafferty M, O’Neill SM, et al. (February 2022). The Mediating Roles of Mental Health and Substance Use on Suicidal Behavior Among Undergraduate Students With ADHD. Journal of Attention Disorders
**Michal L. Cook, Brianne Tomaszewski, Elena Lamarche, Karrah Bowman, Claire B. Klein, Sara Stahl, Laura Klinger (February 10, 2024) Suicide risk in transition-aged autistic youth: The link among executive function, depression, and autistic traits. Autism