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.

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

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

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

My ERC Starting Grant, funded with €1.5 million for 5 years as part of the Horizon 2020 research and innovation program, is focused on building the early warning system WARN-D to reliably forecast depression in young adults before it occurs. Why depression, and why prediction?

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.

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.

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 .

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?

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…

What causes depression in a child and how can they get over it? Leiden Professor of Psychology Bernet Elzinga and behavioural scientist Carine Kielstra recently hosted a webinar on the subject of depression in teenagers. The level of interest was overwhelming.

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

... 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.

PhD defence

People who have taken antibiotics in the past three months pay more attention to negative facial expressions, according to research by postdoc Katerina Johnson and assistant professor Laura Steenbergen. This may explain how antibiotics increase the risk of developing depression.

PhD defence

Imagine how much time, money and discomfort it would save: a personalised treatment for each individual patient. Precision medicine like this is coming ever closer, thanks in part to Elise Dusseldorp’s algorithms. They retrieve a wealth of information from research data.

PhD defence

Positive friendships are characterised by understanding mutual wishes and intentions, respect for each other’s boundaries and pro-social behaviour. Qualities that might be more challenging for autistic adolescents.

In a longitudinal study, Eichengreen and colleagues explored how the certain aspects of emotional intelligence impact the development of adolescents’ mental health, thus identifying potential warning signs and targets for intervention programs. Despite a higher risk for mental health issues and lesser…

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

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…

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

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

Social and Behavioural Sciences, Psychology, Clinical Psychology

Primary Objective: The primary aim of the proposed RCT is to evaluate whether LF-TLP in blended form as an indicated prevention for anxiety complaints is more (cost-) effective than TAU according to the NHG guideline Anxiety. We hypothesize that in comparison to TAU, LF-TLP will result in a significantly…

What is the role of stress and stress-related hormones in emotion regulation?

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…

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Can SMILE, our multi-component intervention, which combines cognitive-behavioural therapy for insomnia, mindfulness, stress, and lifestyle components, improve sleep quality? Can it also improve mood and quality of life and prevent depression and anxiety in the long term?