Everyone feels gloomy from time to time, to a greater or lesser extent, but can you predict when depression is lurking? Jonas Everaert (Medical and Clinical Psychology, Tilburg University and Quantitative Psychology and Individual Differences, KU Leuven) is researching the complex interplay between factors that contribute to the onset and course of depressive symptoms. He is using various methods to identify causal risk mechanisms underlying depression.

Egon Dejonckheere has joined the Department of Medical and Clinical Psychology at Tilburg University, in addition to his appointment at KU Leuven. With a grant from the Research Foundation – Flanders (FWO, Fonds Wetenschappelijk Onderzoek in Vlaanderen), he is doing (among other topics) research on the data quality of experience sampling studies. He is also involved in the development of the app m-Path, a tool to bring experience sampling to clinical practice. Egon introduces himself and tells TESC about his work.

Following a therapy session at home using Virtual Reality. How effective is that? That is one of the questions of the collaborative project Follow the Dot to Beat Your Anxiety. The project focuses on children aged 8 to 17 who follow EMDR therapy because of anxiety or trauma symptoms. They continue the therapy at home by using Virtual Reality glasses. Janniek Bragt-de Jong (Medical and Clinical Psychology, Tilburg University) is PhD researcher on the project and tells about the ins and outs.

Joran Jongerling has been working as a statistician in the Department of Methodology and Statistics at Tilburg School of Social and Behavioral Sciences since July 2021. Together with Eeske van Roekel (Developmental Psychology) he is the director of the Tilburg Experience Sampling Center (TESC). Sandra (TESC project manager) talks to Joran about his interest in intensive longitudinal data, his career, and about challenges and developments in the fast-growing field of intensive longitudinal data analyses.

About one in three cancer patients will experience chronic fatigue after successful treatment. The REFINE project, which started four years ago, focuses on personal treatment of chronic cancer-related fatigue at the Helen Dowling Institute (HDI). TESC talks to Rosalie van Woezik (HDI) about the results so far, and about REFINE 2.0, a follow-up to the project in which the personal network treatment is being quantitatively tested in the HDI's daily practice.

For children and adolescents with chronic illnesses, there is often more at play than the illness in itself. They may feel alone, depressed, anxious, angry, or misunderstood. These children and adolescents are more likely to develop mental health problems, such as depression or anxiety. Research shows that it helps to get involved early and that it is better to prevent mental health problems than to cure them afterwards. But how do you prevent these problems among children and adolescents with chronic illnesses?

In a culture of mobile connectivity, digital well-being is a hot topic. On the one hand, mobile connectivity offers plenty of opportunities. On the other hand, it can put a lot of pressure on individuals. Mariek Vanden Abeele (Ghent University, and the Tilburg Center of Cognition and Communication) received an ERC Starting Grant for the DISCONNECT project. From the perspective that digital well-being differs for individuals and from one time to another, she builds on a dynamic pathway model of digital well-being.

During her PhD project, Marion van den Heuvel (Cognitive Neuropsychology, Tilburg University) conducted research into the influence of maternal anxiety on the child during pregnancy. She studied the effects of maternal anxiety on the baby. At that time, she saw more and more studies on the mother's brain during pregnancy, indicating that the mother's brain changes after having a first child. Marion got interested in this and wondered how the brain develops in the case of anxious mothers.

In their enthusiasm about the new technological possibilities, researchers have been eagerly gathering time-intensive longitudinal data (e.g., with experience sampling methodology) without much regard of crucial measurement issues, partly because proper data-analytical tools were lacking. To close this gap, in her PhD project, Leonie V.D.E. Vogelsmeier develops a new approach for evaluating within-person changes and between-person differences in measurement models underlying participants’ answers in (time-intensive) longitudinal data.