My mission is to realize high-quality research on aging and mental health that takes heterogeneity and complexity as its starting point, and capitalizes on methodological developments to help prevent or delay cascades of functional decline.

My primary fascination behind this mission is that old age is characterized by tremendous heterogeneity; changes in physical, cognitive, emotional and social functioning of older adults all influence each other, and together with demographic and socioeconomic background characteristics determine health and longevity. Therefore, prevention and intervention should be based on research that takes functioning in multiple domains into account.

I accomplish this by integrating theories, concepts and longitudinal cohort data from multiple disciplines. I am head of the Mental Functioning group of the Longitudinal Aging Study Amsterdam (LASA) and Co-PI of the Netherlands Study of Depression in Older persons (NESDO).

Currently funded projects include WARP-AGE: unravelling the complexity of ageing through Dynamic Time Warping (ZonMw Off Road programme); POINTR: examining the role of self-reliance in the development of and recovery from affective disorders (ZonMw GGZ research fellowship) and the sustainability of Resilience After Depression during the Covid-pandemic (Stichting tot Steun VCVGZ grant).

aging, mental health, health inequalities, psychosocial factors, longitudinal cohort studies