UMH Lecture Series
Although we have effective treatments for common mental health conditions, partial remission and relapse is still a clinical challenge. Psychological interventions are good candidates to have long term positive mental health effects throughout life. This presentation introduces a complex systems science perspective on mental health conditions that offers an explanation for high relapse rates in depression and other common mental health conditions. However, having this complex systems lens doesn’t necessarily mean that our interventions have to be complex. Rather, it offers opportunities to design targeted interventions given at the right moment, that changes the system resulting in long term beneficial effects. Preventive Cognitive Therapy (PCT, Bockting 2025, 2009) as started after (partial) remission will be discussed as an example of this approach. Across multiple randomized controlled trials, PCT has shown robust and sustained reduction of relapse risk over 15 months up to 20 years follow-up (Bockting et al., 2005, Biesheuvel et al., 2017, Bockting et al., 2018, de Jonge et al., 2019, Breedvelt et al., 2021, Legemaat et al., 2023, Gulpen et al., 2025). The interventions in PCT that will be presented target risk factors for relapse including positive emotion regulation, stress sensitivity and dysfunctional (cognitive) beliefs. However, we do no fully understand how PCT produces preventive effects over years. The results will be discussed through a complex systems lens, highlighting implications for clinical practice to prevent relapse and promoting long term recovery in common mental health conditions.
Claudi Bockting is a clinical psychologist and psychotherapist. She has been affiliated with the Department of Psychiatry of Amsterdam University Medical Centers, location AMC, since 2017. She was a professor at the University of Groningen at the Faculty of Behavioral and Social Sciences since 2010 and from 2014 to 2017 Professor of Clinical Psychology and Department Chair at Utrecht University. Bockting received, among others, a prestigious grant from the Netherlands Institute of Advanced Studies (NIAS, KNAW) and the Beck Institute Scholarship.
Bockting has published more than one hundred scientific articles in peer-reviewed journals and is the author of several books on depression and editor-in-chief of several books on psychological intervention methods for common mental illness. In addition, Bockting is a member of the Scientific Advisory Board (WAC) in the Social and Humanities (SGW), a member of the Scientific Advisory Council of the Zorginstituut Nederland, a member of the Supervisory Board of a large mental health institution and a board member of the European Association of Clinical Psychologists (EACLIPT).
At the Centre for Urban Mental Health, researchers from different fields use the tools of complexity science to identify new pathways to improve mental health in the city. For example, they investigate the relationship between early life stress, the gut microbiome and mental wellbeing or the dynamics of ageism, loneliness and mental wellbeing for urban elderly.
Their mission is to find new pathways that can be targeted with interventions to improve urban mental health that take into account the complexity and dynamics of mental health problems and mental health disorders in an urban environment.