The main research aim of the department of Psychiatry is to contribute to better prevention and treatment of common mental disorders. Therefore, our main research questions are: what are important causes of common mental disorders and what are predictors of their course? Most of our research focuses on depression and anxiety disorders.
The strength of our young, but experienced, research group is that it has access to large psychiatric cohorts through GGZ Buitenamstel (health care facility for psychiatric problems) and, at the same time, is embedded in strong academic research facilities, such as the Clinical PET center, the Netherlands Twin Register, and the Microarray facility of the VU University and VU University Medical Center.
Longitudinal aging study Amsterdam (LASA)
Research and teaching are organised within one psychiatric care facility and two academic research institutes that closely collaborate: