Sooner or later, most older adults experience functional decline in one or more areas, including mobility, self-care and social interaction. Although many older adults manage to maintain their well-being despite functional decline, this is far from true for everyone.
Annually, 8 to 16% of older adults experience clinically significant depressive symptoms, and these more often remain chronic than in younger populations. The relationship between mental health and daily functioning is complicated: functional decline is one of the causes of depression, but conversely, depression can also accelerate functional decline, creating a vicious cycle of decline in mental health and functioning.
This research project focuses on how to break such vicious circles: which resources make older adults resilient and stimulate functional recovery after depression?
As a PhD student, you generate scientific and clinically relevant knowledge that can help older people respond resiliently to functional limitations and mental health challenges. For this, you use longitudinal data from, among other sources, the Netherlands Study of Depression in Older persons (NESDO) and the Longitudinal Aging Study Amsterdam (LASA). Using additional datasets from abroad and visiting a foreign research group are also possibilities.
You work on:
- Preparing and conducting advanced statistical analyses on longitudinal data;
- Publishing analyses in international and national (scientific) journals and presenting them to relevant stakeholders, and presenting them at national and international conferences;
- Translating and communicating results into recommendations for practice, such as mental health care and geriatricians.
You actively participate in research groups within and outside the department, including the Aging & Longitudinal Modelling section, Amsterdam Public Health institute, and the academic workplace for geriatric psychiatry, which is a collaboration between the psychiatry department of Amsterdam UMC and the mental health care institution GGZ inGeest. The PhD track offers plenty of opportunities to take courses in areas such as epidemiology and statistics.