Department of Psychology
Research
The team of the Neuner and Catani working group at Bielefeld University (AE11) studies the causes and consequences of traumatic experiences with methods from clinical psychology, public health and neurosciences. Across single projects our specific view is characterized by four features:
A publication list of the team can be found here.
Overview of all projects
- Understanding The Etiology of Perinatal Mental Health Problems in A Context of Trauma and Adversity
Parzheen Mohammad, MSc.
Dr. Sarah Wilker, PhDThis DFG funded project investigates how various trauma-related risk factors affect perinatal mental health in a large cohort of women in Iraq, using qualitative and quantitative approaches. The long-term goal of this project is to develop a trauma-informed treatment manual tailored to this population.
- One size fits all? From a randomized controlled trial towards individualized treatment recommendations for Posttraumatic Stress Disorder in post-conflict settings (TRAUMA-FIT)
In war-affected countries, posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD) represents a major mental health problem. Accumulating evidence indicates, that next to the individual trauma history, relevant contextual factors of the social and societal environment, as well as ongoing stressors and adversity play a major role in PTSD development and its treatment after war and conflict. While trauma-focused psychotherapy is recommended as first-line treatment for PTSD, the individual treatment effects vary strongly, and a substantial number of individuals do not benefit from this type of treatment. This high treatment-effect heterogeneity for PTSD indicates that an individual allocation of treatments could lead to improved treatment outcomes. This is especially important in war-affected countries with limited resources for mental health care. Against this background, the present project aims to conduct a large precision mental health trial on effective treatment options for PTSD in the post-conflict region of Northern Uganda. A total number of N = 660 individuals will be randomized to the two arms of the trial: Narrative Exposure Therapy (NET), a trauma-focused short-term intervention, and Problem Management + (PM+), a present-centered intervention that aims to facilitate coping with current stress. Importantly, both treatments have been effectively implemented by local health workers in low-resource settings. Employing machine learning, the optimal treatment condition for each individual will be determined based on a set of individual predictors and relevant social and societal context factors. In the next step, the performance of the algorithm will be evaluated by comparing mean treatment effects and rates of clinically significant changes between individuals who received their optimal versus sub-optimal treatment condition. All in all, the project will provide knowledge on relevant predictors of treatment success in trauma-focused versus present-centered interventions for PTSD patients. Furthermore, knowledge regarding treatment personalization and optimal utilization of treatment resources in post-conflict settings will be generated.
Team
Projectteam
Dr. rer. nat. Sarah Wilker, Dipl.-Psych., licensed psychotherapist, Clinical Psychology & Psychotherapy, Bielefeld University
Dr. Hannah Ihme
Contact person for any questions
Sarah Wilker
sarah.wilker@uni-bielefeld.de
Cooperating Partners
PD Dr. phil. Naser Morina, University of Zurich
Schweizerischer Nationalfonds (SNF)
Data Protection & Privacy
Data protection is very important for our research. This is why you can find everything we do for data protection and privacy on this page. You can download information about our data protection concept in different versions for adults and for children and teens: