Many primary school children suffer from anxiety and their numbers are increasing. Psychologists from the Knowledge Center Anxiety & Stress (KAS) are developing and researching preventive training.

Have you ever experienced the feeling of awkwardness when attending a party where you didn’t know anybody? Ever felt shy at a party within the first few minutes? While this feeling is labelled loosely as feeling socially anxious, social anxiety disorder goes to a much further extent.

Adolescents with good friendships experience fewer anxiety and depression symptoms, PhD student Iris Koele discovered in her research on high school students' social relationships. 'As a psychologist, I include friends in the treatment plan: who do you call when things are not going well?'

As of 1 August, Anika Bexkens has been appointed Professor of Evidence-Based Clinical Practice for Child and Adolescent Mental Health. Her research focuses on the optimal application of scientific knowledge in practice. ‘Scientists and practitioners often speak past each other.’

In a recent mega-analysis, researchers from Leiden University aimed to clarify the contradictory findings of research into social anxiety disorder. They found that to obtain reliable research results having the largest possible sample size is important. Publication in NeuroImage:Clinical.

Teens with depression appear to be more sensitive to criticism from their parents than their healthy peers are.

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.

In this episode, we talk with Leonie Vreeke and Nina Komrij about the Cool Little Kids research project. CLK explores the effectiveness of training parents of anxiety prone toddlers to prevent their children from developing anxiety on a later age. Want to learn more about their research and discover…

Personality is genetic in zebrafish: risk-taking parents have risk-taking children. These are the findings of research by Christian Tudorache and his team published in BMC Neuroscience.

Anke Klein and her team have devised a fun and useful app to help anxious children. In the app, children can upload a video of themselves showing, for example, something that went well for them and share their success with parents, granny or grandad. Developmental psychologist Klein talks about the…

Our world may seem unpredictable and uncertain, especially when others are involved. When interacting with others, we cannot know for sure what they may be thinking or planning to do, but we do a good job guessing. This may not be so easy for everyone…

Brothers and sisters within a family, with the same parents, experience their upbringing differently. As well as the impact of their own negative experiences, the way siblings experience their upbringing also plays an important role in anxiety and depression. This is the conclusion reached by Marie-Louise…

People suffer from anxiety wait on average twelve years before seeking professional help. That’s a pity and it’s unnecessary, says development psychologist Leonie Vreeke. She is therefore developing prevention programmes where parents learn to react in a helpful way to anxious behaviour on the part…

Shyness is perfectly normal, Michiel Westenberg stated in his farewell lecture. But that doesn’t mean that social anxiety shouldn’t be identified and addressed in good time. ‘Serious shyness has strong genetic roots; you don’t just get over it.’

A smile, tears in your eyes or a blush on your cheeks: we understand one another better by mirroring one another’s emotions. In her PhD dissertation, Julia Folz concludes that people with autism or social anxiety can be helped by interventions focused on the body.

Eye contact between parents and children improves their mood and increases feelings of connectedness on both sides; but not in the case of depressed adolescents, Mirjam Wever discovered. Where the parent-child bond has been disrupted, it can be strengthened not only with therapy for the child but also…

A restless night aggravates symptoms in those experiencing suicidal thoughts, as psychologists Liia Kivelä and Niki Antypa have found in their study on the short-term risk factors of suicide. They argue that targeting sleep could thus be essential for suicide prevention.