Netherlands Study of Depression and Anxiety (NESDA)

Depression and anxiety disorders are common at all ages. Approximately one out of four people in the Netherlands will be faced with them at some time during their lives. It is still not clear why some people recover quickly and why others suffer for long periods of time. The main aim of NESDA is to determine the (psychological, social, biological and genetic) factors that influence the development and the long-term prognosis of anxiety and depression. In 2004, 2981 participants were recruited with and without symptoms from primary care practices and specialised mental health institutions in the regions of Amsterdam and Leiden, and in the provinces of Groningen, Drenthe and Friesland. In March 2025, the 8th measurement took place, 21 years after the first people were included. As also family members and offspring have been added to the NESDA cohort over time, the current sample size is 3542 subjects.

Half-day face-to-face assessments of participants started in 2004 and since then have been repeated eight times over a period of 20 years. A 20-year follow-up assessment is ongoing, Retention rates are generally high, ranging from 87.1% (after 2 years) to 69.4% (after 9 years). Psychiatric diagnostic interviews have been administered at all face-to-face assessments, as was monitoring of clinical characteristics, psychosocial functioning and somatic health. Assessed etiological factors include e.g. early and current environmental risk factors, psychological vulnerability and resilience factors as well as (neuro)biology through hypothesis-driven biomarker assessments, genome-wide and large-scale '-omics' assessments, and neuroimaging assessments. You can find more information on the NESDA cohort study website (www.nesda.nl)

NESDA provides a strong research infrastructure for research into depressive and/or anxiety disorders. Its data have been used for many scientific papers describing either NESDA-based analyses or joint collaborative consortia-projects, and are in principle available to researchers outside the NESDA consortium.