UMH-2 PhD project

Expected runtime 2024 - 2028

PhD candidate Valeria Epelbaum

Main applicants
Dr. Derek de Beurs, FMG, Clinical Psychology
Dr. Valeria Krzhizhanovskaya, FNWI, Informatics Institute

‘In our project, we will develop computational models to explore the complexities of suicidal behaviour and transitions from thoughts to attempts. By formalizing existing psychological theories, we aim to simulate real-world scenarios and test the impact of interventions. These simulations can suggest more effective suicide prevention strategies, tailored to different urban environments and personal circumstances.’

UMH-2 PhD project 

Expected runtime 2024 - 2028

PhD candidate To be appointed

Main applicants
Dr. Rixt van der Veen, FNWI, Swammerdam Institute for Life Sciences, Brain Plasticity group
Prof. dr. Marten Smidt, FNWI, Swammerdam Institute for Life Sciences, Molecular Neuroscience group

‘In this project, we will investigate the effects of in utero exposure to THC (the active compound in cannabis) on the development of the midbrain dopamine system and related changes in social behavior and reward sensitivity later in life.’

UMH-2 PhD project

Expected runtime 2024 - 2028

PhD candidate Shakuntala Ramnath

Main applicants
Dr. Nadia van der Spek, FG, Psychiatry
Dr. Mike Lees, FNWI, Informatics Institute, Computational Science Lab and IAS

‘A lack of social connection is strongly related to mental health problems such as depression. Multi-level interventions that improve social connection and reduce loneliness by connecting people with depressive symptoms with each other can be important for reducing mental health problems. In this project, the Centre for Urban Mental Health-UvA, the department of psychiatry of AmsterdamUMC and the faculty of Science of the UvA, in collaboration with Arkin, use computational modeling to predict which people can best be paired in a social connection intervention, with as little risk of ‘contagion’ as possible. We collect data from approximately 750 participants to identify and predict qualitative social connection and the reduction of loneliness in depressed patients through computational analysis. Subsequently, we develop and test online and offline interventions, in which people are personally matched, with the aim of creating new best practices for social interventions for mental health conditions.’

UMH-2 PhD project

Expected runtime 2024 - 2028

PhD candidate Emily Poort

Main applicants
Prof. dr. Karin Verweij, FG, Psychiatry
Dr. Saar Mollen, FMG, Communication Science
Dr. Margot van de Weijer, FG, Psychiatry

'The effectiveness of current interventions for substance use is limited by the complex interplay of risk factors and the diversity of risk groups. Existing studies into risk factors do not take people's genetic vulnerability into account, often leading to wrong conclusions. We will improve existing interventions by incorporating key risk factors and risk groups identified through genetically-informed designs.'

UMH-2 PhD project

Expected runtime 2024 - 2028

PhD candidate Katarzyna (Kasia) Lasek

Main applicants
Dr. Joram Mul, FNWI, Swammerdam Institute for Life Sciences, Fit Brain Lab and Brain Plasticity group
Dr. Sanne de Wit, FMG, Clinical Psychology and Habit Lab
Dr. Sascha Struijs, Faculty of Behavioral and Movement Sciences (Vrije Universiteit), Clinical Psychology

'The STRIDE project will adopt a complex systems approach to shed light on the determinants of exercise persistence in students (WO/HBO/MBO) and the interrelationships with mental health and well-being, as well as relevant personality/environmental/lifestyle factors. We will also develop a behavior change intervention for students that promotes exercise persistence, and thereby improves mental health, and determine the mechanisms of action of this intervention.'

UMH-2 PhD project

Expected runtime 2024 - 2028

PhD candidate Angeliki Tsoukaneli

Main applicants
Dr. Nida Gizem Yilmaz, FMG, Communication Science
Prof. dr. Ellen Smets, FG, Medical Psychology and Amsterdam Public Health
Dr. Annemiek Linn, FMG, Health Communication

‘The project will investigate how a personalized culturally-sensitive chatbot can contribute to secondary prevention in three generations of migrants suffering from depression and/or non-suicidal self-injury. The project brings together expertise from Communication Science (dr. Nida Gizem Yilmaz, dr. Annemiek Linn), Medical Psychology (prof. Ellen Smets), Clinical Psychology (dr. Tinne Buelens, dr. Henk Cremers, dr. Marie Deserno), and Preventive Medicine (dr. Kaylee Kruzan).’

UMH PostDoc Alvin Junus

The best time window to intervene on a young person’s suicidality is arguably in the earliest stage, before incident psychosocial stressors tipped the young person to think of suicide. Nevertheless, underlying psychiatric conditions typically cluster in non-trivial patterns, such that for young people having each distinct pattern, a unique set of psychosocial stressors may be more likely to directly trigger suicidality. In order to develop tailored early intervention strategies that are relevant within the current societal contexts, these nuances and how they might have changed in recent years warrant a deeper understanding.

In this study, we used young people’s responses to a large-scale online screening platform at mindmasters.nl 21 months before and after Covid-19 pandemic restrictions. Latent profile analysis classified individuals based on their underlying psychiatric conditions (substance use, eating disorders, psychosis, history of suicidal thoughts and behaviors). Psychometric network analysis was then conducted to identify the most important psychosocial stressors that bridged to suicidality for each profile of young people in each epoch.

Four consistent underlying profiles were revealed in each epoch. Entrapment was a central bridge node to suicidality for individuals in all profiles, especially post-Covid. For young people having the poorest mental health and with history of suicide attempt especially, self-satisfaction and sense of worthlessness acted as central bridge nodes to incident suicidality.

The importance of many precipitating factors of suicidality might have changed for different subgroups of young people over the past few years. Taking these psychiatric profiles into account could allow online self-help websites to improve their screening potential for at-risk groups and to tailor appropriate early interventions for young people’s suicidality in today’s post-Covid context.

UMH PostDoc Alvin Junus

Dementia exerts a heavy burden on older adults, their caregivers, and society. Moreover, it is frequently comorbid with physical and mental disorders having the highest burden on older adults. Complex interplays between psychiatric, physical, and social risk factors and specific (sub)domains of dementia likely influence dementia etiology, and these dynamics are likely unique across ethnic and cultural boundaries. Delineating possible pathways that may be specific to distinct ethnic subgroups would be integral for effective tailored intervention strategies.

In collaboration with clinicians, we conceptualized psychometric networks delineating interrelations between indicators measuring aspects of dementia and dementia’s psychiatric, physical, and social risk factors based on patient data from an urban memory clinic in Amsterdam. Gaussian Graphical Model and causal network model were independently estimated for native Dutch older adults and those with migration background. The two networks were overlaid and then analyzed.

Interrelations of indicators between and within respective dementia domains were robust and relatively consistent across ethnicities. This suggests a somewhat universal structure of symptomatologic interrelations. Regardless of ethnicity, completing primary education could indicatively reduce impairment in aspects related to visuospatial, learning, and memory. Depression in native Dutch, and diabetes severity in those with migration background, had bidirectional links to indicator for daily living interference for their respective subgroups, which in turn linked to indicators for various aspects of cognitive functioning.

Taken altogether, incompletion of primary education could lead to dementia through a common mechanistic pathway, while depression and diabetes could each occupy culturally specific roles in the pathway to dementia. Culturally attuned preventive measures at clinical settings would strategically complement universal policy initiatives to lower the burden of dementia in urban populations.

Does living in urban areas cause cognitive and linguistic changes that affect your mental health? Can these changes be detected through our online interactions? This project at UMH will take stock of changes in urban mental health via large online social media datasets (i.e. Twitter).

Online differences in the language and social networks of individuals that live in urban versus non-urban areas will be studied to get a better idea of how behavioral, cognitive, and social factors interact over time and lead to different mental health outcomes. The ultimate goal will be to support future analysis and develop new toolkits to better understand mental health in cities.

About

Johan Bollen is a professor of informatics at Indiana University. He was formerly a staff scientist at the Los Alamos National Laboratory from 2005-2009, and an Assistant Professor at the Department of Computer Science of Old Dominion University from 2002 to 2005. He obtained his PhD in Experimental Psychology from the Vrije Universiteit Brussel (VUB) in 2001.  

Bollen’s work is situated at the intersection of computational social science and large-scale data analytics. His research has focused on the complex interactions between human behavior, emotions, and cognition, in particular in online environments, with applications in the psychological and mental health aspects of computational social science.

For the past 15 years he has studied the complex dynamics of human behavior and emotions interacting with large-scale techno-social systems, such as the internet, social media, financial markets, governance, and scholarly communication. He has published over 80 publications from research that has been funded by numerous agencies such as the NSF, DARPA, IARPA, NASA, and the Mellon Foundation, leading to innovations, in particular, on significant questions of how human cognition and social behavior interact, and increasingly how those bidirectional interactions shape mental health, public health, and human well-being.

More information about the UMH Fellowship:

As a IAS/UMH Fellow Professor Bollen will investigate whether living in urban areas causes cognitive and linguistic changes associated with mental health that can be detected from online language. Professor Bollen and his team will examine the content  of a very large set of geolocated timelines and Twitter data sets for longitudinal indicators and language features associated with changes in mental health using a variety of tools that his team has developed over the past 5 years, such as sentiment lexicons, indicators of so-called distorted thinking (thoughts associated with a variety of internalizing disorders), and other features, including online social network parameters, discovered by  a range of supervised and unsupervised machine learning techniques that can be trained to detect the differences in the language of individuals urban vs. non-urban areas. The results of this analysis will be compared to public health indicators such as infection rates, excess mortality, and population density. The analysis will not be solely focused on COVID-19-related changes, but general differences in how the mental health status of individuals in urban areas differs from those in non-urban areas and which factors drive such differences. The present toolkit of analytical tools is specifically focused on US English, but can be translated to the Dutch context which would be part of the proposed research activities as a fellow. Furthermore, the analysis can be performed for “snapshots” of the data, e.g. to test general differences, and longitudinally over time, possibly revealing the dynamics of the complex interactions of behavioral, cognitive, and social factors that are involved in these differences.

UMH-1 PhD project

Symptoms of affective and addictive disorders are common during adolescence and change over time. In resilient adolescents, symptoms may disappear, while in others, these symptoms persist or even transition to a disorder.

The aim is to understand the complexity of the development of affective disorders such as anxiety, mood, stress, and addictive disorders such as alcohol, drug abuse, excessive gaming, or social media use in adolescents living in urban areas. For this purpose, the Amsterdam Born Children and their Development cohort will be used.

An interdisciplinary approach is taken in investigating dynamic interactions between multi-level factors including individual, social, and environmental health determinants.

PhD Candidate: Hanan Bozhar

Project Applicants: associate professor Susanne de Rooij (Amsterdam UMC, Location  AMC -Epidemiology and Data Science); associate professor Helle Larsen (FMG-Developmental Psychology)

Project Team: dr. Tanja Vrijkotte; dr. Anja Lok

Involved directors: prof. dr. Claudi Bockting; prof. dr. Reinout Wiers

UMH-1 PhD project

Mental and physical well-being of vulnerable seniors, especially in large cities, present massive and urgent concerns to aging individuals (>100.000 in Amsterdam), caretakers, and society at large.

The resilience network perspective proposes that seniors’ mental and physical fitness is represented as meta-stable states in a system of networks (from functional and structural brain networks to networks of symptoms, behaviors, environmental factors, and social networks).

This will help signal imminent transitions and uncover patterns of network factors that promote or reduce resilience. This approach will enable preventive interventions to promote resilience among the most vulnerable citizens.

PhD Candidate: Lotte Brinkhof

Project Applicants: associate processor Harm Krugers (FNWI-SILS); professor Richard Ridderinkhof (FMG-Developmental Psychology)

Project Team: prof. dr. Jaap Murre; dr. Sanne de Wit

Involved directors: prof. dr. Claudi Bockting; prof. dr. Reinout Wiers

UMH-1 PhD project

This project will develop novel computational models to study the dynamics of addictive substance (ab)use. The central hypothesis is that the dynamics of addiction and mental health issues are driven by psychological and social dynamics and the aim is to build complex system models to understand this by forming a computational modeling framework that integrates psychological and social levels of explanation. This modeling framework will be applied to study the interplay of substance use and mental health and will provide a toolbox applicable to study other common mental health conditions throughout the Centre for Urban Mental Health.

PhD Candidate: Maarten van den Ende​

Project Applicants: associate professor Michael Lees (FNWI-Informatics); assistant professor Sacha Epskamp (FMG-Psychological Methods)

Project Team: prof. dr. Han van der Maas, prof. dr. Peter Sloot

Involved director: prof. dr. Reinout Wiers

UMH-1 PhD project

Adolescent depression is prevalent in urban settings and associated with recurrence, comorbidity and suicide. Many, if not all of the challenges, faced by the developing adolescent in an urban environment have an impact on the intestinal commensal microbiota. This may be particularly valuable in adolescents with depression because response to current treatment is less effective than in adults.

Therefore, targeting the intestinal bacteria, and consequently the microbiota-gut-brain axis, to reduce depressive symptomatology is an innovative concept. The malleability of the nervous system at adolescence can be harnessed and may provide a critical window of opportunity to safely mitigate depression.

In order to target the microbiome, we need an increased understanding of the microbial patterns in urban settings and how this is altered in depression. This goal asks for a complexity approach, in which multiple factors at distinct levels interact and biological systems are a potential endpoint to target.

PhD Candidate: Vera Korenblik

Project Applicants: dr. Anja Lok (Amsterdam UMC, location AMC, dept. Psychiatry); professor Stanley Bul (FNWI-SILS)

Project Team: prof. dr. Claudi Bockting; dr. Aniko Korosi

Involved director: prof. dr. Claudi Bockting

UMH-1 PhD project

Understanding how exercise training protects against stress and prevents depression and anxiety in high-risk urban adolescents. Adolescents living in an urban, demanding and social- media-dominated environment commonly report high levels of stress.

Consequently, the incidence of stress-related psychopathologies, such as depression, is rising in this population. Furthermore, adolescents are nowadays often physically in-active and overweight, which further increases their sensitivity to stress. Exercise training helps to deal with stress. How it exactly does this, remains poorly understood.

The goal of this project is to understand how exercise training decreases sensitivity to stress and whether exercise training plays a central role in preventing depression and anxiety in high-risk adolescents, by studying it at the neurobiological and behavioral level.

PhD Candidate: Anneke Vuuregge

Project Applicants: assistant professor Joram Mul (FNWI-SILS); assistant professor Anouk Schrantee (Amsterdam UMC, Location AMC -Radiology & Nuclear Medicine)

Project Team: prof. dr. Paul Lucassen

Involved director: prof. dr. Claudi Bockting

UMH-1 PhD project

This project proposes leveraging a complex systems approach to better understand contributing factors in addiction and depression in an urban context focusing on diversity in terms of ethnic minority groups. The project consists of three subprojects.

First, a cross-sectional network model of depression and addiction will be derived in the urban context for subgroups (e.g., divided by ethnicity, age and gender).

Second, the dynamical properties of this cross-sectional model will be studied and used to derive predictions about the course of the two disorders. Here, the focus will be on the resiliency factors for particular subgroups.

Third, interventions will be focused on and the derived model will be tested to understand if it is able to predict treatment effect by comparing its results with clinical intervention data. Insights of this project could lead to more targeted interventions for addiction, depression and their comorbidity.

PhD Candidate: Karoline Huth​

Project Applicants: Associate professor Ruth van Holst (Amsterdam UMC, location AMC, dept. Psychiatry, assistant professor Judy Luigjes (Amsterdam UMC, location AMC, dept. Psychiatry); assistant professor Maarten Marsman (FMG-Psychological Methods)

Involved directors: prof. dr. Claudi Bockting; prof. dr. Reinout Wiers

UMH-1 Associated PhD project

Depression is a highly prevalent and burdensome mental disorder in all parts of the world. Importantly, there are signs that depression is more prevalent in cities and that risk factors for depression cluster in urban areas. Given that the urban environment is now the main habitat of the world population, understanding the impact of urban living on depression is of major importance.

The main purpose of this project is understanding how different aspects of the urban environment, spanning macro-, meso- and, micro-level factors, all dynamically interact and conspire to contribute to onset and maintenance of depression in vulnerable urban inhabitants. We aim to draw a theoretical causal-loop model of ‘urban factors’ and their impact on depression, and explore the (intersecting) roles of low socioeconomic status and ethnicity more in depth.

Results of this project will feed into a pilot study aimed to test a new accessible intervention for depression in vulnerable populations (i.e. with low socioeconomic status and ethnic minority groups). 

PhD Candidate: Junus van der Wal

Project Applicants: prof. dr. Claudi Bockting (Amsterdam UMC, location AMC, dept. Psychiatry); prof. dr. Karien Stronks (Amsterdam UMC, location AMC, dept. Public Health)

Project Team: dr. Mary Nicolaou; dr. Anja Lok

Involved director: prof. dr. Claudi Bockting

UMH-1 Associated PhD project

In this project, the aim is 1) to develop a network-based method to map an individual's interactions between psychological symptoms and urban factors influencing these symptoms (e.g., social interaction, physical contexts, etc.) and 2) to develop and test personalized interventions based on this method.

To fulfill these aims, the plan is to carry out three main studies. First, a simulation study is performed to test the feasibility of idiographic networks in clinical practice.

Second, idiographic networks are used to develop a personalised intervention in students who want to stop smoking tobacco and/or cannabis and present other mental health symptoms. 

Third, the same network-based intervention is applied in a vulnerable sample of adolescent ethnic minorities who are either undergoing treatment in youth care or are in juvenile detention, and who suffer from addiction and other mental health comorbidities.

PhD Candidate: Alessandra Mansueto

Project Applicants: prof. dr. Reinout Wiers (FMG-PSY); prof. dr. Julia van Weert (FMG)

Project Team: dr. Sacha Epskamp; dr. Barbara Schouten

Involved director: prof. dr. Reinout Wiers

Emerging problems in families and their children at risk are usually not acknowledged, or too late, leading to a lack of support for those who need it the most and resulting in more severe problems within these families. The low-key, Family Check-Up (FCU; Dishion, 1990) method seems to be very helpful in detecting and supporting families at risk in an early stage.

More specifically, the FCU is a brief, family-oriented intervention to improve family management skills of parents, disruptive family-interactions, and associated child problem behavior. The intervention is assessment-driven, tailored to individual families’ needs, and identifies and promotes positive parenting practices (e.g., positive behavior support). The FCU has been associated with a range of positive outcomes, such as improvements in adolescent self-regulation, depression, and school engagement, as well as improved parenting practices, including long-term effects for families living in a context of high neighborhood deprivation (e.g., Shaw et al., 2016).

With four studies, the aim is to expand current knowledge by studying 1) the FCU's effects in Dutch families and 2) how urbanicity or urban stress influences program responsiveness.

Postdoc: Brechtje de Mooij

Project Team: dr. Loes van Rijn-van Gelderen, prof. dr. Geertjan Overbeek, dr. Gerlieke Veltkamp, dr. Christian Bröer  

The Centre for Urban Mental Health at the University of Amsterdam and Amsterdam UMC are conducting an extensive systematic review and meta-analysis (more than 300.000 studies) to find out what factors and interaction of factors contribute to the onset, maintenance, and relapse of depressive-, anxiety-, and substance use disorders.

Click here to access the official Project Website.

Thrive is an international metropolitan initiative, in which the Amsterdam branch is filed under the Public Health Service (GGD), and initiated by the International Initiative for Mental Health and Leadership (IIMHL).

Through a collaborative co-creation approach, Thrive Amsterdam and UMH have struck up valuable collaborations over the past years.

Members and directors of The Centre for Urban Mental Health in addition play an advisory role in Thrive Amsterdam, London and New York.

ReCONNECTED: A complex systems approach towards REsilient and CONNECTED vulnerable European communities in times of change.

The Reconnected project is funded by the European Commission and comprises a consortium that is lead by, amongst others, dr. Annet Kleiboer (Vrije Universiteit) and 10 other European partners, including the University of Amsterdam and Centre for Urban Mental Health. UMH leads WP1: Development and testing of the integrative conceptual framework (lead Claudi Bockting, Reinout Wiers). With Angelique Cramer (associate professor) and with Prof. dr. Mark Hoogendoorn (Vrije Universiteit) they supervise Rutger van der Linden (PhD candidate AI and personalisation). 

For extensive information on Reconnected, we would to like refer you to the Reconnected website.

UMH-1 Associated PhD project

Adam Finnemann is affiliated with the Theory Methods Lab and Centre for Urban Mental Health. He writes: 'At the Theory Lab, we think of theory development as a skill that can be learned akin to how statistical expertise is taught. I’m particularly interested in how tools and concepts from "complexity science" can help psychological researchers reason about their system of study. With the Center for Urban Mental Health, I apply theory construction tools to the relationship between city life and well-being, social, and economic satisfaction.'

PhD candidate: Adam Finnemann

Project Team: prof. dr. Han van der Maas, prof. dr. Denny Borsboom, dr. Sacha Epskamp

Involved director: prof. dr. Reinout Wiers

UMH-1 Associated PhD project

The project aims to investigate how stressful experiences during sensitive developmental periods can influence later life coping with a highly demanding social environment. We will model aspects of harsh conditions and exposure to substance use during the post-weaning period, as a second 'hit' in the trajectory to develop later mental health problems, and study the effects on adult stress coping, social behaviour and social status in a complex enrichment environment to model aspects of the complex urban environment. Moreover, to identify possible underlying mechanistic changes in brain plasticity we will integrate molecular measurements, neuroendocrinological and immunological investigations.

PhD candidate: Lisa Bouwman

Project Team: dr. Rixt van der Veen (FNWI), prof. dr. Paul Lucassen (FNWI)

Involved director: prof. dr. Reinout Wiers (FMG)