Manon Hillegers

Prof. Manon Hillegers (female, 1970, MD PhD), is full professor and head of department of child and adolescent psychiatry/psychology at Erasmus MC-Sophia children’s hospital. She has expertise in studying the development of psychopathology in high risk populations. Besides deep phenotyping using traditional measures, she has experience with ESM and e-health preventive interventies. She is leading three cross-diagnostic (mood and psychotic disorders) longitudinale offspring studies (DBOS, BRIDGE, MARIO) and is a key participant and member of the managing board in Generation R, an internationally well-known longitudinal population birth cohort study also part of the Consortium on Individual Development (CID) that both stand out because of their large scale and in depth measurements.

Mood disorders are among the most serious psychiatric disorders with a high degree of functional limitations in the different stages of life. Early recognition and treatment of sub-syndromal mood symptoms in young people has a favorable effect on the course and prognosis. The most important risk factor for development is a familial burden for mood disorders. Based on the results of two Dutch offspring studies the risk and resilience factors of the child, the family and the environment need to be considered and offer an opportunity for early identification. However, differentiating normative developmental turmoil from prodomal depressive symptoms in adolescence, is very difficult. In this presentation results and plans for assessing (daily) negative and positive mood in different contexts (friends, home, school), and (subsequent) depressive symptoms using a mobile phone application for ESM are shared.