Mission
The Interdisciplinary Center Psychopathology and Emotion regulation (ICPE) aims to perform high-quality interdisciplinary research on psychobiological processes involved in the onset and course of mood-related problems, in order to develop effective personalized interventions to improve social-emotional functioning.
Major objectives are: (1) To better understand which factors contribute to the onset and course of mood-related problems, and how these factors vary across individuals; and (2) To use this knowledge to develop effective personalized interventions to prevent and treat emotional dysregulation.
Description
The ICPE is a highly interdisciplinary program, encompassing researchers with various backgrounds, including psychology, psychiatry, sociology, family medicine, neuroscience, mathematics and philosophy. The program focuses on the research theme described above, and adopts various approaches to achieve its goal. Large longitudinal epidemiological surveys (for example, TRAILS, NESDA, LifeLines) are complemented with more in-depth studies in smaller groups, including neuroimaging, psychophysiological, and intensive time-series studies, thereby enabling the elucidation of underlying endophenotypes and temporal patterns. The study designs are both observational and experimental, and involve a variety of (neuro)psychological, social and biological measures.
Specific research subthemes within the program include questions regarding mental health trajectories, person-environment transactions and interactions, emotional stability and reactivity, and psychopathology in the context of somatic conditions. The ultimate goal is to identify high-risk groups as well as underlying risk or protective factors in order to develop more effective, personalized prevention and intervention strategies for mood-related problems.
The ICPE seeks to offer its staff members the best possible opportunities to carry out outstanding research. This is facilitated by weekly research meetings organized by PhD students; meetings twice a month for postdocs and senior staff to critically discuss ideas, plans, and strategic issues; and grant proposal writing groups. This approach has been quite successful, as evidenced by the award of two Veni grants, three Vici grants, an ERC grant and a fellowship from the Dutch Brain Foundation. Moreover, the ICPE has gained a reputation for being not only a productive program but also a highly inspiring research environment with high ethical standards, and has proven to be attractive to excellent researchers from other institutes.