Machteld Marcelis –  Biopsychosocial mechanisms of mental variation in daily life

 

Biography:
Machteld Marcelis has been working as a clinical and academic psychiatrist since 2004. She is professor of Transdiagnostic Psychiatry in the Department of Psychiatry & Neuropsychology at Maastricht University and is also affiliated to the Technical University in Eindhoven. She heads the psychiatric residency training and the medical-psychiatric research program in a large regional mental health service provider (GGzE) where she is also working clinically in a specialized psychosis expertise center (TOPGGZ center VIBE), focusing on early intervention strategies.

She has a longstanding academic career in psychosis research, showing evidence for several environmental and biological risk factors such as cannabis, urbanicity, obstetric complications, trauma and stress, including gene-environment interactions in familial risk studies. Her current research focuses on the transdiagnostic role of psychosis in mental ill-health (e.g. in autism-spectrum disorders, affective and eating disorders). In addition, she examines transdiagnostic biological and psychological risk and resilience factors for mental variation in order to develop novel interventions such as personalized M-health feedback, personalized light-therapy, mental imagery focused and other psychological therapies to improve personal well-being across diagnostic boundaries. This line of research contributes to increased awareness on early warning signs and to improve early intervention strategies from both the self-management perspective as well as the care-giver perspective. To do so, various methods such as intensive daily life M-health monitoring and biological sampling using blood, saliva and multimodal brain imaging are used. Dr. Marcelis has been studying these themes within (inter)national consortia, for example BIOCLOCK, HAMLETT, NEUROTREND, PSYSCAN, SMARTSCAN and GROUP; funded by, among others, NWO, ZonMw and the Brain & Behaviour Research Foundation (NARSAD).

 

Abstract:
Stress, neuroticism and trauma are important transdiagnostic risk factors in a wide range of psychological conditions. These phenomena are often associated with sleep and biological clock disturbance and may trigger affective and psychotic symptoms or (intrusive) imagery. In order to increase coping and resilience of individuals who are at a higher than average risk for psychological dysregulation, more knowledge on these mechanisms is needed, not only at the group level, but even more so at the N=1 level. Therefore, we aim to create an in-depth understanding of both the psychological and biological mechanisms driving symptoms and personal well-being in the context of daily life, taking into account the individual’s environmental load. This knowledge contributes to the development of transdiagnostic and personalized interventions. In this lecture, the results and highlights of studies that have examined these issues will be presented, as well as some of the upcoming projects and developments.