Pim Cuijpers

Led by the Editor of the British Journal of Psychiatry, Gin Mahli, we wrote an Editorial about recent changes to US research funding, the far-reaching consequences of this for science, and the importance to resist this. The BJPsych journals are committed to publish mental science and to advance psychiatric knowledge that improves the mental health of one and all.

https://doi.org/10.1192/bjp.2025.118

The MAHA report (Making America Healthy Again) claims that psychotherapy is more effective than medication in children and adolescents, and they refer to a paper of which I was the first author. But this paper does not say anything about these treatments in children and adolescents, only about adults. Treatments of depression in adolescents have a different efficacy than treatments in adults, so they cannot be compared and this reference is therefore not useable in adolescents. It also fails to state that the combination of therapy and antidepressants is superior to therapy or antidepressants alone. In adolescents there is no evidence that psychotherapy is more effective than antidepressants, but there is clear evidence that combined treatment is more effective than therapy or antidepressants alone. We have shown that in another meta-analysis (Zhou et al., 2020).

I am not in favor of extended use of antidepressants in youth, but if you want to make that point you should use evidence for that and correct references.

Read more about this wrong citation at:

https://www.notus.org/health-science/maha-report-update-citation-errors

Interested in mechanisms of psychotherapy? Common factors? If most therapies have comparable effects? Listen to the podcast where Joshua Kugel leads a conversation between Bruce Wampold and me

Watch at Mindstew

Watch on Youtube

The Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam has published a news item on the 2024 APA Award for Distinguished Professional Contributions to Applied Research, which I received from the American Psychological Association

See the item here

How can digital interventions contribute to a reduction of the disease burden of depression on populations? Watch my webinar on Youtube

Five decades of research on psychological treatments of depression: Lessons learned. Watch my webinar on Youtube

How can prevention contribute to the reduction of the disease burden of depression on populations. Watch my webinar on Youtube

I have recorded 4 webinars on how to reduce the disease burden of depression in populations. Here is the overview page:

Overview webinars on #DepressionSolvingTheToll

Psychological treatments are effective in primary care, but somewhat less than in specialized care. This may be related to the higher response rates in control conditions in primary care, which may point at a more transient nature of depression in primary care. Read our new open access meta-analysis in the Journal of Affective Disorders

https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jad.2023.07.011

In September I will officially retire, but will continue with parts of my scientific work. I will give 4 webinars in September on the leading theme of my work in the past decades: How can we reduce the disease burden of depression on the population level. The webinars describe my work on four subthemes: (1) Preventing the onset of depressive disorders; (2) Digital interventions and the need to develop scalable interventions for global mental health; (3) How to improve the effectiveness of psychological interventions for depression (and how meta-analyses can contribute to that); and (4) A research agenda for further reductions of the disease burden of depression.
Read here an interview I gave on these webinars and why I want to give an interim overview of my work on these topics (and follow me for more information about the webinars)

https://vu.nl/en/news/2023/interview-with-pim-cuijpers-professor-of-clinical-psychology

Should we focus only on treatment or also on universal, selective and indicative prevention as well as structural factors leading to mental health problems? Read my new Open access paper in Global Mental Health.
https://doi.org/10.1017/gmh.2023.22

Interested in personalized treatments of depression, anxiety and psychosis, or thinking of a grant proposal in that direction? Register for my talk at Wellcome Trust webinar on April 6, 2023

Webinar

Listen to the interview I gave about the effects of psychotherapy as preparation of my keynote at the 21st Congress of the Italian Society of Cognitive-Behavioral Therapy in Bari, Sept 2023;

https://youtu.be/mX0N__jAV1k

Listen to the interview I gave about the effects of psychotherapy as preparation of my keynote at the 21st Congress of the Italian Society of Cognitive-Behavioral Therapy in Bari, Sept 2023;

https://youtu.be/mX0N__jAV1k

My lecture on digital interventions for depression at the School of Medicine at the University of Auckland on February 16th is now available on Youtube:

https://youtu.be/KjIe-9dotjQ

The 1-hour lecture I recently gave in Auckland on “How to become a productive scientist” is now available on Youtube. Organized by prof. Bruce Arroll, University of Auckland

Youtube video

Watch the lecture I gave on “Scalable digital interventions to adress mental health during the COVID-19 pandemic”, organised by NYU Shanghai, March 31

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EqHP_PM8p_M

How should new psychological interventions be developed? Top-down or bottom-up? Read our new Viewpoint paper in JAMA Psychiatry, led by Ioana Cristea and with Tomaso Vecchi

Proud to be appointed as co-chair of the new Expert group of WHO Europe to identify gaps and solutions to the mental health impacts of COVID-19

Watch the lecture I recently gave on Challenges in Assessing the Efficacy of Prevention Interventions at the REDEFINE Final Conference

Do we know how psychological interventions work? Watch the lecture I gave on that subjects last week at the #ZonMw Conference “Building on effectiveness research’ on Youtube

When is the evidence sufficient for psychological interventions to be disseminated? Read our new paper on the need for regulatory requirements in the Lancet psychiatry. Led by Marianna Purgato, with Corrado barbui

Our Viewpoint paper in Lancet Psychiatry

Psychotherapy for depression is less effective in children and adolescents than in adults and the elderly. Almost all research in youth was done in the US and hardly any in Europe, while in adults this number is evenly divided. Read our meta-analysis published in JAMA Psychiatry

Do we know how psychotherapies work? Read this fascinating article in Knowlable Magazine by Katherine Ellison. “It is as if we have been in a pilot phase of research for five decades”

Open access to treatment manuals for psychological interventions is important for replication and for dissemination, but we found that only 7% of manuals were available. Read our new letter in World Psychiatry, led by Sarah Watts and Mark van Ommeren

Does CBT work in older adults with depression? Is group therapy effective for perinatal depression? Are psychotherapies more or less effective in East Asia than in the US? Run your own fully automated meta-analysis in psychotherapies for depression at our new website: www.metapsy.org

Collaborative work with David Ebert, Eirini Karyotaki, Mathias Harrer