You can find some tips here on how to maintain your mental health.

In the Dutch healthcare system, only MHC psychologists (GZ-psychologen) are licensed to practice psychology unsupervised.

Mental health issues in the Dutch court: The criminal court as a border guard between the regular Mental Health System and the Criminal Justice system?

This focus area adresses the mental well-being of people of all ages, from infants to the elderly. The emphasis lies on understanding, preventing, and treating mental health problems in a variety of contexts, such as the family, school, and work environment. We carry leading research and education programmes…

Fitness is more than physical health alone. An equally important aspect of our general well-being is mental fitness. Mental fitness refers to the fitness of the mind. During your PhD research, there might be periods in which you feel insecure or down. It is essential to take good care of yourself. Don’t…

Introduces a novel trope of photographic images dealing with states of mental disorders; focuses on photographs that visualize disturbed corporeal and mental perceptions of the world and connects medium-specific characteristics of photography to concepts from mental disorder studies.

Our ability to learn and control movements is essential for engaging in goal-directed behaviour. From buttoning your shirt and driving a car, to cooking dinner and brushing your teeth -- our actions in daily life rely on this ability.

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…

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.

Making predictions about emotional problems or the effects of air pollution: Marjolein Fokkema’s algorithms are getting better at this all the time. She is making her algorithms increasingly flexible, so they can predict not just characteristics at one particular moment, but also how skills, for example,…

Exploring the landscapes of mental health and cardiometabolic research.

Do general practitioners recognize children with or at risk of problematic anxiety and is there a pattern that might help differentiate those with and without anxiety disorders in general practice?

On the 25th of September, Yufang Wang successfully defended a doctoral thesis. Leiden University Centre for Linguistics congratulates Yufang on this achievement!

As young people’s friendships improve, their mental resilience also increases. This is according to research conducted by Anne-Laura van Harmelen, Professor of Brain, Safety and Resilience at Leiden University.

What is the effectiveness of two school-based skills-training programs in promoting mental health?

How do you know if your idea has succeeded? The Queen coming to call a year and a half later might just be a clue. This happened to the Leiden student foundation ‘Door Het Geluid’, which promotes student well-being.

Anne-Laura van Harmelen has received a Vidi grant from the Dutch Research Council (NWO). This talent programme will enable Van Harmelen to research the social and neurobiological mechanisms of resilience in young people with childhood trauma.

People already diagnosed with a mental disorder before the COVID-19 pandemic did not show a disproportionate increase in symptoms afterwards. This is one result from the first systematic review of longitudinal studies following their study population from before to during the first eighteen months of…

Stress among students is a growing problem. A new Student Wellbeing taskforce will be looking at the mental health of students at Leiden University.

Can epigenetic changes explain associations between early life stress and health outcomes?

The manner and context in which the government supports citizens' initiatives are often more important than the legal framework. In practice, it only creates unnecessary division and there are no solid grounds for it. Esmée Driessen, PhD candidate at the Department of Constitutional and Administrative…

This project examines how speakers store and process regular pitch variation.

The Social Resilience & Security interdisciplinary programme broadens its scope by embedding two research projects lead by Dr. Joanne Mouthaan. The projects adress suicide prevention skills and mental health of Ukraine refugees. Both projects will be integrated in the programme with the aim to improve…

Exploring the synergy of light therapy and exposure psychotherapy to enhance PTSD treatment outcomes.

The STAP study examines the cost-effectiveness of Written Exposure Therapy (WET) for post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) symptoms in primary care settings.

Charlotte Holt is a second year International Justice student at Leiden University College. She did an internship at Academia Neerlandesa; a language school that offers Dutch language courses to medical professionals. ‘An internship can become very beneficial for those who wants to discover where their…

The roles of shame, guilt and social access in adolescent aggression

Having a chronic somatic condition can result in a variety of impairments in patients’ daily lives, including not only physical complaints such as pain, itch, and fatigue, but also problems of negative mood and impairments in social relationships. Next to disease characteristics, individual difference…

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On 9 November, Roosmarijn van Es defended the thesis 'The mind in the courtroom: on forensic mental health reports in judicial decision-making about guilt and sentencing in the Netherlands. The doctoral research was supervised by Jan de Keijser, Maarten Kunst and Janne van Doorn.

In this dissertation, the types of context Dutch speakers need to interpret the poly-interpretable word ergens ‘somewhere/anywhere’ are studied.

Our mission is to bring together research and practice focused on the improvement of mental health and the enhancement of treatment / psychotherapy success. To reach this goal we focus on the following paths:

Knowledge of mental distress and resilience factors over the time span from before to after a stressor is important to be able to leverage the most promising resilience factors and promote mental health at the right time. To shed light on this topic, we designed the RESIST Study, in which we assessed…

Early Childhood Community Practitioners’ analyses of new mother’s challenges in Alexandra Township South Africa: a collaboration between academics and practitioners

Our mission is to advance the understanding of mental health of individuals with a history of stress and/or trauma through rigorous interdisciplinary research, integrating insights from clinical psychology, neurobiology, and social sciences. We are committed to translating our findings into innovative…

Clinical psychology is a discipline concerned with the application of psychological science to the assessment and treatment of mental disorders.

Resilient future generations that will shape a healthy society.