Marcello Ferrada-Noli

Marcello Vittorio Ferrada-Noli
Born	25 July 1943
Residence	Italy
Citizenship	Sweden

Marcello Vittorio Ferrada-Noli is a Swedish medicine doktor and Professor Emeritus of Public Health Sciences / Epidemiology. He was formerly Professor of Epidemiology, and of International Health at the University of Gävle; and formerly Chair of the International and Cross-cultural Injury Epidemiology Research Group at the Karolinska Institutet.^[1]

He earned his PhD in Psychiatry at the Karolinska Institutet and was thereafter Research Fellow and Lecturer in Social Medicine at Harvard Medical School. During his stay at Harvard he published most of the research discoveries below, judged "pioneer contribution to epidemiological research" (Academic awards).

Biography

Marcello Ferrada-Noli, also known in Italy as Ferrada de Noli, was born in Chile 25 July 1943, in family of Italian ancestry rooted in Genoa (Liguria), descendants of nobleman and explorer António de Noli. Father company owner and former officer in the Carabineers and elite equestrian, and mother university professor and artist. He had originally academic education in Philosophy, became Full Professor of Psychology at age 27 (University of Chile, Arica, 1970) and he was Full Professor at the University of Concepción at the time of Augusto Pinochet's 1973 Chilean coup d'état.

Marcello Ferrada-Noli had a classical liberal ideological background - influenced by his eldest brother, a lawyer with earlier membership in the right-wing Liberal Party -, however he later evolved towards left-liberal and social-libertarian positions. At age 22, Marcello Ferrada-Noli was one founder of MIR, the Movement of the Revolutionary Left. MIR was a Chilean political party and former left-wing guerrilla organization (founded on October 12, 1965) prominent in the resistance on the Pinochet Dictatorship. Together with his old-time friend from school years Miguel Enríquez (died in combat 1975) and Marco A. Enríquez, Ferrada-Noli was an author of the Political-military Theses of MIR - known also as La Tesis Insurreccional - the first document of MIR approved in its foundation congress of 1965.^[2][3][4] He represented there left-libertarian standpoints.

During the government of the Christian Democratic Party, President Eduardo Frei declared MIR out of the law and Marcello Ferrada-Noli posted in the nation-wide published wanted-list of thirteen fugitive MIR leaders,^[5] together with his friends Miguel Enríquez, Bautista van Schouwen, and others. Later captured in August 1969 ^[6] Ferrada-Noli was acquitted without trial after been kept in isolation cell ^[7] at Concepción prison (La Cárcel). Altogether he had been captured or imprisoned at seven occasions for his political activities in Chile during his time in the MIR.

In the aftermath of the resistance to the military coup of 1973 Marcello Ferrada-Noli was captured in Concepción and taken first to the Stadium and later became imprisoned in Quiriquina Island Prisoners Camp. After his liberation he went to Italy, where he was one witness upon the Russell Tribunal which investigated human rights violations in Chile and Latin America. He became thereafter member of the Russell Tribunal Scientific Secretariat in Rome.^[8] Afterwards, assigned by MIR to Sweden, he became there a Geneva Convention political refugee with the intervention of Amnesty International (Sweden) prominent lawyer Hans Göran Franck. During his exile in Sweden Ferrada-Noli remained in operative activities of MIR's Comité Exterior until 1977; latest assigned as head of counter-intelligence operations of MIR in Northern Europe at the times of Pinochet Operación Cóndor. He left MIR definitely in 1977 after unsolved ideological confrontations with the new MIR-leadership which advocated a broad political coalition comprising the Communist Party and the Christian Democratic Party (PDC), which Ferrada-Noli opposed.

In 1998, being Professor at the University of Tromso in Norway, Ferrada-Noli publicly demanded the extradition of Pinochet, at the time in London, to stand trial in Scandinavia for the disappearance under captivity of his friends Bautista van Schouwen and Edgardo Enríquez.^[9]

Research

Ferrada-Noli found several indicators (psychiatric and epidemiological markers) of heightened suicidal behaviour in cross-cultural settings.^[10] One was the high associations discovered 1998 between PTSD diagnose and history of injury-related severe trauma, such us torture under captivity, in the mechanism of suicide methods.^[11][12] Other findings referred to heightened prevalence of suicidal behaviour associated to PTSD psychiatric co-morbidity,^[13][14] particularly late-onset PTSD (2004).^[15] He had previously reported (1996) PTSD clinical symptoms being more determinant of suicidal behaviour than cultural differences among traumatised refugees.^[16]

Another discovery was the over-representation of immigrants in the epidemiology of suicide in Sweden. The phenomenon was first reported by Ferrada-Noli in 1990 as statistical tendency,^[17] and later, in 1994, by establishing high significant statistical over-representations which demonstrated that immigrant status is a risk factor for suicidal deaths in Sweden.^[18][19] In a nation-wide study of 1996 he reported the Relative risk estimate for immigrant suicides in Sweden as a whole (1.5 more times than for a native Swede).^[20][21] Being foreign-born immigrants fourteen percent of the Swedish population, the finding had also a political relevance and called for reforms. This was heightened when in a later investigation (1997) Ferrada-Noli et al. demonstrated that, compared with native Swedes, less immigrants who have died of suicide have sought help for their suicidal crisis; and that among those immigrants that did seek help at psychiatric emergency services, significantly less were admitted for further treatment, compared with native Swedes.^[22]

Further, he is credited for several pioneer findings on the negative impact of poverty and unfavourable socioeconomic indicators in the incidence of suicide. This research publications series included the empirically based rebuttal in 1997 of the socioeconomic hypothesis of suicide incidence (Émile Durkheim, 1897) and which had prevailed during one hundred years.^{[23][24][25][26][27][28]}

Ferrada-Noli's conclusions on the negative correlation poverty-suicide in Sweden were at first debated by David Lester, the eminent suicide researcher and a follower in this regard of the Durkheim School.^[29] However, a Swedish study conducted over a decade after at Stockholm University by Sara Magnusson and Ilkka Mäkinen ^[30] and which used nation-wide epidemiological data, confirmed the early findings of Ferrada-Noli.

He is also credited for the identification of a new diagnostic category among suicidal behaviours (Metasuicide, referring to violent deaths in which self-inflicted lethal intent is deliberately concealed).^[19]

Academic awards

On June 30, 2005, Marcello Ferrada-Noli received in Cuba the academic distinction Profesor Invitado of the Instituto Superior de Ciencias Médicas de La Habana, motivated "for his dedication and commitment to the betterment of human life" and among other, “For his pioneer contribution to epidemiological research, in special his international studies on the phenomenon of suicide among immigrants and refugees". In the Elogio académico accompanying the diploma were also listed his principal research findings. March 14, 2006, by the Medical Faculty of the University of Chile, ad-honorem appointment Profesor Agregado at the School of Public Health "in merit to the collaboration that you given to educational programs at the medical school". Received the academic award Mención al Mérito by the Universidad Autónoma de Nuevo León for among other his book Teoría y Método de la Concientización published in Mexico 1972. Finally, upon retirement, he received at the Swedish University of Gävle the "title of distinction" Professor Emeritus of Public Health Sciences "in value of Meritorious academic services" (1 July 2007).

Marcello Ferrada-Noli retired from academic activities 2008. His last input to international and cross-cultural psychiatric epidemiology was as contributor author in the Oxford Textbook of Suicidology.^[31] At present he is a permanent resident of Italy and President of the Antonio de Noli Academic Society.

Professor Emeritus

Marcello Ferrada-Noli retired from full academic activities 2008. As Professor Emeritus, he proceeded with academic assignments as Senior Adviser at the Dept. of Immunology, WGC, Stockholm University; He was appointed by the Swedish Government (Ministry of Education and Research) as alternative scientific member of the Research Ethic Review Committee, Uppsala Region ^[32], in 2005; the appointment was extended under the new government 2009. His last input to international and cross-cultural psychiatric epidemiology was as contributor author in the Oxford Textbook of Suicidology.^[33] At present he is a permanent resident of Italy, where he has been President of the Antonio de Noli Academic Society ^[34] 2009 - 2012.

References and Footnotes

External links

• Arte de Noli. Paintings by Marcello Ferrada-Noli
• Professors blogg
• De Noli. The Italian Bond
• Lotta Continua. Marcello Ferrada de Noli's homepage
• Physicians for Human Rights: Leave No Marks