Mood and Anxiety Disorders

Group

We want to reduce individual suffering and societal costs caused by depression and anxiety, two disorders that deeply affect people’s lives.

Mood and anxiety disorders affect many people at some point in their lives. Their impact can be devastating to patients, families and constitutes a major public health burden. We devote our efforts to their incidence, course and consequences.

In large population cohorts, clinical cohorts, and innovative individualised studies we study:

which individuals are at risk of developing serious problems;
how symptoms of anxiety and depression manifest in daily life;
how symptom patterns evolve across the lifespan;
which strategies are effective to prevent problems;
how to treat persons who do not respond to existing interventions.

Relevance

How our research benefits to society

By understanding underlying mechanisms of mental disorder, we strive for better knowledge, better treatment, and more effective societal prevention.

We train and tutor a new generation of multidisciplinary researchers from different countries and cultures, and collaborate with patients and caregivers in tailoring research to their needs and questions.

Given the enormous personal and public health impact of mood and anxiety disorders we share our findings not only with fellow researchers, but also with patients, clinicians, and the larger public. Together with societal partners, we are establishing large-scale prevention programs in the north of the Netherlands.