Galyna Pyliagina, MD, PhD, DSc, is Professor and Head of the Department of Psychiatry, Psychotherapy and Medical-Psychological Disciplines at the Shupyk National Healthcare University of Ukraine in Kyiv, a position she has held since 2015.

Suicidology has been at the centre of her work for three decades. She began her research career at the Ukrainian Research Institute of Social and Forensic Psychiatry and Narcology (1993–2007) and defended her doctoral thesis in 2004 on auto-aggressive behaviour, its pathogenetic mechanisms and the clinical-typological aspects of its diagnosis and treatment. Her research and clinical practice address self-destructive behaviour in children and adults alike, combining psychopharmacotherapy with psychotherapy grounded in existential and cognitive approaches. She is the author of the psychotherapeutic method “Personal Integration Training – The Path to Oneself”.

She has published 208 scientific works, including manuals, educational guides and the two-volume Medical Psychology (2020), and teaches psychiatry, child psychiatry, psychotherapy, narcology and medical psychology to postgraduate specialists across Ukraine. Since the full-scale invasion she has been one of the country’s public voices on mental health in wartime, on suicide risk and on the effects of prolonged collective trauma.