• Minne Fekkes & Brechtje de Mooij, Geertjan Overbeek, Bram Orobio de Castro, Annaleena Holopainen

During the last decade, there has been an increase in mental problems among youth. Strengthening the resilience of young people has been proposed as one of the solutions to tackle these increasing numbers. With a variety of scientific methods like microtrials and meta-analyses, Minne and Brechtje and colleagues have been working to detect those elements that can help children in strengthening their social skills and resilience. Currently, a large RCT is underway to examine a high school program that helps students deal with stress. For more information, check out the meta-analysis of effective components of social skills training programmes and a tipsheet from ZonMW.

• Patty Leijten, Annabeth Groenman, Merlin Nieterau, Karen Rienks, Geertjan Overbeek, Loes van Rijn-van Gelderen & Brechtje de Mooij

Parenting support programs can effectively support parents’ and children’s mental health. In this line of research, Preventive Youth Care staff and students identify the core elements of scalable parenting programs to effectively reduce children’s mental health problems worldwide. This work refines theories on the role of parenting in the development of children’s mental health problems and optimizes the effects and scalability of programs to benefit families across the globe.

• Promovendus: Karen Rienks
• Promotors: Patty Leijten, Elske Salemink

The potential of parent-focused interventions for child anxiety has been suggested in both prevention and treatment, but much remains unknown about their actual merit. The current project will investigate optimal combinations of parent-intervention components to reduce children’s anxiety. Parent interventions are often studied as a ‘package’, consisting of multiple components. Knowledge on which components are associated with better effects is crucial to understand why some interventions are more effective. Additionally, it will test the hypothesis that families benefit more from therapy components targeting risk factors that, for them personally, are more relevant, malleable, and acceptable. Findings on the effectiveness of specific intervention components can guide intervention development, and contribute to our understanding of the role of parents in children’s anxiety.

This study is part of the NWO VIDI project ‘Risk Factors for Mental Health Problems as (un)Suitable Intervention Targets’, awarded to Patty Leijten.

• Promovendus: Merlin Nieterau

The goal of this PhD project is to acquire a more in-depth understanding of the underlying networks of symptoms, risk and protective factors in individual families dealing with disruptive child behavior. In this project we will gain insight into daily feelings, thoughts, and behavior of parents who struggle with their child’s (3-8 years old) disruptive behavior. Analyzing such intensive longitudinal data provides new insights about within and between family differences. Results may contribute to the development of evidence based personalized family support.

This study is part of the NWO VIDI project ‘Risk Factors for Mental Health Problems as (un)Suitable Intervention Targets’ awarded to dr. Patty Leijten.

• Promovendus: Angelique Boering
• Promotors: Geertjan Overbeek, Levi van Dam, Annabeth Groenman

Each year Halt meets 16.000 first offenders, which gives them the unique position to identify youths (and families) in vulnerable circumstances and to offer the necessary support before major problems arise. With a tailored Halt-intervention, Halt aims to prevent youths from making the same mistakes by giving them insight in and the chance to repair these mistakes. In addition to that, youths can now nominate a non-parental, adult mentor from their own social network, also referred to as a Youth Initiated Mentor (YIM). Based on the idea “it takes a village to raise a child”, the YIM forms a pedagogical coalition with parents and functions as a representative and confidant for the adolescent. This research focuses on whether the addition of a YIM to the Halt-intervention contributes to (1) the protective factors and future/development of an adolescent and (2) preventing recidivism. This study will compare youths following the Halt-intervention to youths following the Halt-intervention with a YIM. The study will consist of a pre-, post- and follow-up measurement 6 months after the intervention.

This project is part of and subsidized by the ZonMw Program 'What works for youth?'.

• Promovendi: Sanne Agterberg, Laila Wiersma
• Promotors: Ruben Fukkink, Floor van Rooij, Loes van Rijn-van Gelderen

Recently, it became possible for man-man couples in the Netherlands to get a baby with the help of a surrogate and in some cases a gamete-donor. As it is likely more parents will chose this route, it is important to have good counseling guidelines to help them developing as well as possible. Unfortunately, there is no empirical evidence for such guidelines.

We aim to investigate wellbeing, development, counseling and support needs of prospective parents, surrogates, gamete donors, and children born through surrogacy in a longitudinal study starting before conception. This will be done by conducting interviews, having parents, surrogates and gamete-donors filling in questionnaires, and gathering observational data from children born by surrogacy. Besides that, retrospective needs of gay fathers using surrogacy outside of the Netherlands will also be studied to give insight in long-term demands. Societal perspectives on surrogacy will be studied to gain insight in reactions families created this way might face. Evaluation of this data will lead to counseling guidelines for intended parents and surrogates entering the process of surrogacy.

The study was rewarded with NWO funding.