Title Promoter Affiliations Abstract "An institutional approach to mental health and the mental health care use of unemployed people in Europe: Cross-national comparative research into the role of policies and social norms " "Piet Bracke" "Department of Sociology" "It is widely known that the unemployed have a high risk of mental health problems, however, only recently has attention been paid to their mental health care use. My PhD research shows that mental health care use by the unemployed is often higher than would be expected based on their need for care. In a European context of high variation in unemployment, labor-market policies, and health care expenditure, it is crucial to understand whether, how, and why unemployment is differently related to mental health and mental health care use in different countries. To date, the lion’s share of comparative research focusing on the role of policies has been restricted to labormarket outcomes. This research proposal includes comparative research on the topic from an institutional approach, by paying attention to the role of policies and social norms of unemployment. First, I abandon the traditional regime perspective and use fuzzy set analysis, which bridges qualitative and quantitative research and enables me to combine unemployment policies and health care system characteristics. Second, I investigate the impact of unemployment policies and the changed economic context, on the way people view unemployment. In the next step, I explore whether this social norm of unemployment changes the relations between unemployment, mental health, and mental health care use. I rely on repeated cross-sectional data from the Eurobarometer, the European Values Survey, and the European Social Survey. " "Supporting refugee and migrant children’s mental health through fostering family-school interactions in school-based psychosocial intervention: Towards a grounded theory model on school-based collaborative mental health care" "Lucia De Haene" "Parenting and Special Education, School Psychology and Development in Context" "European host societies face the challenge of adequately supporting young refugees and migrants at-risk of developing mental health difficulties. Reflecting on what constitutes adequate support, scholars increasingly point to the potential of school-based psychosocial interventions. To date, however, empirical evidence on these interventions remains scarce. Rooted in my doctoral study’s findings, this research proposal seeks to contribute to the evidence-base by generating an in-depth understanding of school-based psychosocial interventions’ potential to foster positive family-school interactions that shape young refugees’ and migrants’ well-being and mental health. I aim at developing: (i) an in-depth understanding of school actors’ and refugee and migrant parents’ perspectives on family-school interactions and their role in shaping young refugees’ and migrants’ well-being; (ii) a grounded theory model on school-based collaborative mental health care, as an intervention that engages with family-school interactions in supporting refugee and migrant children's mental health." "Predictors and consequences of (poor) perinatal mental health. Influences of job activities, social support, and free time on perinatal mental health, and the consequences for the development during the first year of life." "Environmental Biology" "This research project focusses on the predictors of mental health and resilience of professionally active and inactive (expectant) mothers and their partners during the perinatal period, the consequences for the parents themselves, and for the offspring during the first year of life. The goal is to develop and adequately evaluate the efficiency and effectiveness of potential intervention strategies. Data from four different sample will be used. Three samples were part of the Prenatal Early Life Stress (PELS) project: one in Leuven (n = 170), one in Tilburg (n = 190), and one in London (n = 138). The fourth sample concerns a PELS-related pilot study in Flanders (n = 500)." "Predictors and consequences of perinatal mental (un)health. Influence of professional activity, social support, leisure time on perinatal mental health and health and consequences for development in the 1st year of life" "Annick Bogaerts" "Woman and Child" "This research proposal focuses on predictors of experienced mental problems and resilience of professionally active and non-professional (expectant) mothers and their partners during the perinatal period, and on the consequences for the parents themselves and for the offspring in the first year of life, with the aim of to draw up prevention strategies and to be able to adequately estimate their efficiency and effectiveness . " "Mental HEALTH 4 ALL: Development and implementation of a digital platform for the promotion of access to mental healthcare for low language proficient third-country nationals in Europe 'MHEALTH4ALL' (OZR EU BONUS)" "Koen Kerremans, Antoon Cox" "Linguistics and Literary Studies" "During a three-year multidisciplinary trajectory, leading academics and non-academics (e.g. linguists, clinical and social psychologists, communication scientists, migrant and healthcare provider organisations, public service interpreters), will develop, implement and evaluate, across various European healthcare settings, an evidence-based multilingual culturally-sensitive sustainable digital information and communication platform to enhance access to mental healthcare for third-country nationals (TCNs) with low language proficiency (LLP) in the host country's language." "Socialising mental health care: Competences of health professionals in transition" "Stefaan De Smet" "360° Zorg en Welzijn, EQUALITY ResearchCollective, Substance use and Psychosocial Risk Behaviours" "The organisation of the Flemish care landscape is in the midst of a transition from inpatient care to community-based care. This transition requires new competences from professionals in care, assistance and services. After all, until now, current care professionals in the GGZ (mental health care), with nurses, remedial educationalists, social workers and occupational therapists as the most important disciplines, have mainly been trained according to an 'institutional logic' in which they work from their own discipline with the client admitted to a ward. In the community-oriented mental health care, on the other hand, care is mainly realised from a multidisciplinary collaboration, where the function differentiation according to discipline is less sharply defined than in classic inpatient care. Yet this transition in working methods takes place without a framework for this, neither to guide healthcare professionals already active in inpatient care in this nor to prepare students and graduates for it. From this discrepancy stems the central research question of this project: ""What support can education and healthcare organisations offer to (future) healthcare professionals to enable them to function as optimally as possible in a multidisciplinary and society-oriented healthcare context?"". The focus here is on the role of generic and discipline-specific competences. As a valorisation of the project, an online competence explorer was developed, aimed at employers in the mental health sector. The application is primarily intended to identify key competences revealed by the research. The tool combines real-life situations with qualitative and quantitative measurement. This enables the employer to make a realistic assessment of the competences the participant possesses. The competency explorer can help remedy gaps in the desired competency profile within the organisation. In addition, a train the trainer module was developed for (future) care professionals in the mental health sector on practical skills in dealing with suicidal ideation and end-of-life questions." "For better health in university and college students: pin-pointing the interplay between social support, study stress, substance use and mental health across different study programs." "Edwin Wouters" "Social Epidemiology & Health Policy (SEHPO), Epidemiology and social medicine (ESOC), Centre for Population, Family and Health" "Background: In contemporary Belgium, the university or college experience has become an important transitional period in the life course. Culturally, these years are viewed as a time of transition, experimentation and risk-taking. This transitional period in life is not without risk: increasing attention – especially in the United States – is given to the elevated stress levels that university and college students experience, which can be linked to increased substance use and mental health problems. However, little is known about the interrelationships between study stress, substance use and mental health among the Flemish student population – stressing the need for research on this relevant student health problem. In addition, students do not live and study in a social vacuum: they are surrounded by peers and embedded in study programs. This context can potentially alter the interrelationships between study stress, substance use and mental health problems: (1) social support as a potential buffer and (2) the characteristics of the study program as a driver for inter-study-program variance. Little is however known on the impact of these social and organizational factors on the described interrelationships. Objectives: The present BOF DOCPRO Bonus-project aims to address these shortcomings by examining the impact of student stress on both mental health problems and substance misuse, mediated by the on- and off-line social support available to the student and across different study programs. Methods: More specifically, we will (1) study the interrelationships between study stress, the use of three substances (stimulants, prescription sleeping pills and cannabis) and mental health problems using the 2017 Head in the Clouds dataset (expected n = approx. 20.000). (2) We will use Structural Equation Modelling to test which theoretical model best mimics the role of on- and off-line support in these interrelationships: a direct effect, an indirect effect (via study stress) or a buffer effect (impacting on the path between stress and substance use/mental health). (3) We will employ multiple group SEM to assess how these relationships differ across the different study programs: do differing levels of knowledge and competition impact on these interrelationships? The two latter research questions will be addressed using a newly gathered dataset among the students of the Association University and Colleges of Antwerp. Expected outcomes: The proposed study can have both theoretical and practical implications. Theoretically, it is the first study to explore the complex mechanisms underlying substance use and mental health problems among a large student population – with special attention for the role of social and organizational determinants. Practically, the resulting scientific knowledge potentially enables according effective preventative interventions to help students channel study stress and avoid detrimental health choices and mental health problems." "The association of mental health with the cardiometabolic risk profile of children and adolescents and the role of sleep, health behaviours and weight status in this association." "Stefaan De Henauw" "Department of Public Health and Primary Care, Department of Public health, University of Bremen" "Obesity and cardiometabolic disorders are increasing worldwide amongst children and adolescents. This PhD project aims to investigate whether mental health aspects are risk factors for cardiometabolic disorders in European children and adolescents using data from the IDEFICS/I.Family cohort to strengthen prevention and intervention strategies. Special emphasis is given to the role of sleep in this association." "IMMERSE The implementation of Digital Mobile Mental Health in clinical care pathways: Towards person-centered care in psychiatry" "Inez Germeys" "Contextual Psychiatry" "The overall objective of the IMMERSE (Implementing Mobile MEntal health Recording Strategy for Europe) project is to develop implementation strategies for Digital Mobile Mental Health (DMMH), a person-centered mobile health solution targeting mental health disorders. The DMMH consists of an application for mobile devices to systematically collect self-reported current mental states and symptoms in daily life; a data-platform that allows the analysis of the self-reports; and a user interface to visualize the collected data into tailored feedback to the service user and the clinician. By providing personalized feedback, the DMMH 1) increases insight, self-management and autonomy of service-users, 2) improves patient-engagement and shared decision-making, 3) identifies personalized targets for treatment, and 4) improves assessment of treatment outcomes. The DMMH thus scales rigorously evidence-based personalized self-assessments from bench to bedside in clinical practice, where it transforms service users from passive recipients of care into active experts in their own experiences, as such opening the route to a real needs- and patient-led personalized psychiatry. In this project, we aim to capitalize on the facilitators and overcome the technological, legal, ethical, societal and behavioral barriers for implementation.. We will apply implementation science principles, using a mixed-methods approach, to develop and investigate the implementation of DMMH to clinical practice in different health care systems across Europe, which will be trialed in 4 different countries in the EU. Participatory co-design and service design methods will be used to ensure that key stakeholders i.e., patients and the clinicians who deliver their care, are involved at every step of the project. The findings from the implementation studies and stakeholders’ input will be translated to an exploitation strategy and tailored outreach for further sustainable scaling of DMMH." "Acute effects of park characteristics on mental health among older adults with a low socio-economic status" "Benedicte Deforche" "Department of Movement and Sports Sciences, Department of Public Health and Primary Care" "This project aims to examine acute effects of park characteristics on mental health among low socio-economic older adults. Three studies will be conducted to assess acute mental state using mobile EEG while walking through the park: 1) observational study, 2) natural experiment, 3) virtual experiment. Recommendations will be formulated to optimize future park renovations for promoting healthy ageing."