Marcello Ferrada de Noli

Marcello Ferrada de Noli (born 25 July 1943) is a Swedish professor emeritus of epidemiology, and medicine doktor in psychiatry (Ph.D. Karolinska Institute, Sweden).

Studies: Bachillerato universitario (Chile) in philosophy, Pontifical Catholic University of Valparaiso, 1962.

University of Concepción, 1962–1968.

Ferrada de Noli has been referred to as one of the founders of the Revolutionary Left Movement (Chile), MIR (1965), and co-author of the "Political-Military Thesis" approved in the foundation congress.

MIR was a far left guerrilla organization with roots in the Socialist Party of Chile, where he had participated in the regional board of its youth organization in Concepción.

MIR was considered Pinochet regime's "number one counterinsurgency target".

Profesor de Filosofía degree, University of Chile, 1969.

He was detained several times by the government authorities, and was among the 13 leaders of MIR listed in the national arrest warrant issued by the Chilean authorities prosecuting MIR's subversion activities in 1969.

He was finally captured and held incommunicado in Concepción's Prison.

Ferrada de Noli was full professor of psychology at the University of Chile, Arica, 1970 and an invited professor at Universidad Autónoma de Nuevo León, México, 1972.

At the time of the 1973 Chilean coup d'état he was full professor of psychosocial methods at the University of Concepción.

In "Story of a Death Foretold: The Coup against Salvador Allende, 11 September 1973", historian Oscar Guardiola-Rivera reports that Marcello Ferrada and other members of the MIR "launched resistance operations on the night of 11 September" in the town of Concepción.

After the aborted MIR resistance to the military in Concepción ensuing the 1973 Chilean coup d'état, Ferrada de Noli was captured and held prisoner in Quiriquina Island.

Alongside the imprisonment, the miliary terminated his professorship at Concepción University.

In a photo of the epoch in newspaper La Tercera, Ferrada de Noli appeared among prisoners described as "extremists that have attacked the military forces with fire weapons".

In 1974 he went to Italy to participate as a witness at the Russell Tribunal in Rome, which reviewed human rights transgressions by the Government Junta of Chile.

Ferrada de Noli held various research positions at the Karolinska Institute in Stockholm, from assistant researcher at the Social and Forensic Psychiatry Department (1987) to Senior Research Scientist at the Department of Clinical Neuroscience, Psychiatry Section (1997).

Licentiate in Medical Sciences (psychiatry), 1994, and PhD in psychiatry in 1996, Karolinska Institute, Sweden.

Postdoctoral in Social Medicine, Harvard Medical School, 1997–1998.

professor of health psychology, University of Tromsø, Norway 1997.

He qualified as a full professor of health promotion, and as a professor of cross-cultural psychology, at the University of Bergen, Norway, 1999, and was thereafter invited professor of cross-cultural psychology at the Norwegian University of Science and Technology, Norway, 2000.

In Sweden, he was full professor of public-health epidemiology at the University of Gävle, position shared at Karolinska Institute, Department of Social Medicine 2002–2007.

From 2004 to 2007 and 2007-2012 he was appointed by the Swedish government alternate scientific member of the Swedish Central Ethical Review Board Etikprövningsnämnd for research.

He was named affiliate professor at the medical faculty, University of Chile, 2006.

Invited professor of International Health, University of Gävle, 2007.

professor emeritus (title), 2007.

The Swedish newspaper Dagens Nyheter (2008) described Ferrada de Noli as "left-liberal", and newspaper Ystads Allehanda (2013) writes, "Left-liberal. But his conservative past continued to chase him".

He was research fellow and lecturer at Harvard Medical School, and was later head of the research group of International and Cross-Cultural Injury Epidemiology at the Karolinska Institute until 2009.

Ferrada de Noli is known for his investigations on suicidal behaviour associated with severe trauma.

He is the founder of the NGO Swedish Doctors for Human Rights, SWEDHR.

He is also a writer, and painting artist.

His work has been cited in about 2.390 scientific articles and books, In the journal Clinical Psychology Review (2009), three authors wrote that Ferrada de Noli and co-workers had found a new pathway in the pathogenesis of suicidal behaviour associated with PTSD.

The review concluded that Ferrada de Noli and his co-workers "demonstrated that among refugees with PTSD, major depression was not substantially associated with heightened levels of suicidal behaviour".

Meaning that the path to severe suicide attempts in PTSD victims was not mediated by depression - as it was thought before - but linked directly to PTSD.

The discovery indicated modifications in prevention and treatment of suicidal behaviour.

Another finding was significant correlations between specific methods in suicidal behavior and methods used in torture inflicted to prisoners later diagnosed with PTSD.

In the book Suicide and the Holocaust, David Lester referred to that finding, and summarized: "for example those subjected to water torture thought of using drowning".

He established ethnicity as significant risk factor for suicidal deaths in Sweden, and found statistically significant markers associating Socioeconomic Status (SES) and suicidal behaviour in Sweden.

In an op-ed in Dagens Nyheter (2015), Ferrada de Noli advocated for Sweden to return being a neutral country "as it was in Olof Palme's times", and "resuming an active role in the work for peace and respect for human rights in the world".

In newspaper Expressen (2018) Ferrada de Noli declared he participated as "social-libertarian" in the foundation of the guerrilla organization MIR in 1965, besides having been briefly active in the Swedish Liberal Party during the 1980s – which at the time had a social-liberal profile in Swedish politics.