What are the circadian disturbances underlying depression vulnerability? How are they related to mood, cognition and sleep ?

The Leiden Index of Depression Sensitivity (LEIDS) measures cognitive reactivity (CR) to sadness, an aspect of cognitive vulnerability to depression, conceptually similar to rumination.

I want to understand the overlap between physical health, mental health, and healthy aging and whether/how stress (behaviorally and biologically) may tie these concepts together.

How do genetic and environmental factors make us vulnerable to depression?

We found that, next to the effectiveness of the intervention, it’s also very likely that the intervention is cost-effective compared to attention only.

To investigate the effectiveness of an online self-help programme for people with HIV and depressive symptoms.

What are the social and neural mechanisms that contribute to fluctuations in self-esteem in healthy adolescents and adolescents with depression?

What is the effectiveness of (booklet or online) self-help programmes for people with somatic stressors and depressive symptoms? What works best for whom? How to improve motivation and adherence?

Depression has traditionally been linked to increased inflammation. Innovative research by psychologist Eiko Fried refutes this popular assumption. He shows that specific depression symptoms such as sleeping problems explain this relationship. Publication in Psychological Medicine .

Evidence that the right diet can prevent or alleviate depression is weak. In literature reviews on the subject, the authors often reach strong conclusions, nonetheless. This is what Florian Thomas-Odenthal, a master’s student in Psychology at Leiden University, discovered in his thesis research. Publication…

... which build on self-regulation and stress-regulation theories and considers the modification of cognitions as a mediator of therapeutic change.

The aim of this project is to investigate the (cost)effectiveness of two innovative forms of trauma-focused therapy for patients with childhood abuse related PTSD. The ultimate goal is to improve quality of care and contribute to treatment innovation for this severely ill target population.

With a starting grant of the European Research Council (ERC) for promising young researchers, Eiko Fried aims to develop a personalised early warning system, that will reliably forecast depression before it occurs. Fried (Clinical Psychology) talks about this WARN-D, promising to radically transform…

What role do parent-child interactions play in the development, maintenance and treatment of depression in young people?

PhD Defence

Stress, burnout, depression – these conditions pervade all levels of our society. Children and students suffer from constant pressure to achieve; at the international level, tensions lead to short-sighted actions; and, at the personal level, stress affects our health and social environment. How do our…

PhD Defence

Psychologist Daphne Tona is one of the first to investigate a small nucleus in the brain stem 'in vivo' in living volunteers. That nucleus is involved in cognitive function and neurological and psychiatric disorders. With this research Tona is further mapping the brain. PhD defence on September 10.

Prof. Bernet Elzinga (Clinical Psychology Unit) is one of the seven scientists from the Leiden University who has received a Vici grant of 1.5 million euros from NWO. Vici is one of the largest grants for individual scientists in the Netherlands. The funding will enable her to do research for the next…

PhD Defence

Are disturbances to the brain, such as Alzheimer's or autism, linked to specific defects in the underlying communication networks in the brain? If this is the case, subtle changes in the networks can act as a marker for brain disturbances. Neuroscientist Serge Rombouts will be investigating this, together…

PhD Defence

PhD Defence

PhD Defence

Clinical psychologist Bernet Elzinga has been appointed as Professor of a personal chair at the Faculty of Social and Behavioural Sciences. This professorship will contribute both nationally and internationally to the broader promotion of Leiden University in the field of stress and psychopathology.

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CERQ is a questionnaire measuring cognitive coping strategies developed by Dr. Nadia Garnefski and Dr. Vivian Kraaij.

When psychologists repeated a hundred studies in 2015, their results differed in two-thirds of the studies. ‘Research into research is not a luxury but a necessity,’ says Professor of Methodology and Statistics of Psychological Research Mark de Rooij. ‘My aim is to improve psychological research, to think…

This is an Erasmus+ International Credit Mobility project of the Faculty of Social and Behavoriural Sciences with Macquarie University in Australia.

Is blended care a feasible and effective treatment method for social anxiety in adolescence?

Toward optimal measurement and greater understanding of youth cognition in school refusal and cognitive behavioural therapy outcome

Dutch researchers are joining forces to conduct research together with a series of societal partners to keep the biological clock healthy in our modern 24-hour society. The BioClock consortium will receive a research grant of no less than 9.7 million euros for this. It is one of the projects that receive…