Josefien Breedvelt, PhD joined King’s College London in January 2023 on a prestigious 3-year Prudence Trust Fellowship.

She previously held academic and third-sector research posts at the Centre for Urban Mental Health, University of Amsterdam, the National Centre for Social Research and the Mental Health Foundation, UK.

She is interested in preventing the onset and relapse of common mental health conditions. The questions that drive her work are what works, when, for whom and how? In trying to answer these questions she uses a range of research methods including individual participant data meta-analyses, longitudinal modelling of risk and protective factors, and experimental studies.

Josefien holds a PhD from the University of Amsterdam (Department of Psychiatry) entitled “Turning prevention into a challenge: Towards a new model of depression prevention”, supervised by Professor Claudi Bockting, Professor Simon Gilbody and Dr Marlies Brouwer. She holds an MSc in Mental Health Sciences from King’s College London and a BSc in Psychology from the University of Groningen (cum-laude).

Her editorial on advancing gender equality in mental health science in the British Journal of Psychiatry won the award for best editorial 2019.

Research Interests

• Children and young people
• Preventing depression and anxiety onset and recurrence
• Research co-production
• Individual participant data and network meta-analysis
• Mechanisms of change
• Secondary data analysis

Teaching

Josefien lectures on the MSc in Child and Adolescent Mental Health in research methods and systematic reviews.

Expertise and Public Engagement

Josefien has written over 20 public facing reports on mental health at the Mental Health Foundation and the National Centre for Social Research. She led a £400k work package at the Centre for Urban Mental Health, University of Amsterdam focussed on setting up interdisciplinary community-academic research partnerships. She has also co-produced several animations to communicate her research, including on neighbourhood social connection and digital mental health.

Together with the Royal College of Psychiatrists and the Mental Health Foundation, she set up a successful podcast series discussing mental health research, attracting over 6000 listeners.

She has blogged for the Mental Elf, the Mental Health Foundation and the National Centre for Social Research. She has provided comment to the Independent, Daily Mail, Mad in America, EOS Science, VICE, The Guardian and the Times and her research has been covered by Woman’s Hour.

She is a member of the Consortium for the prevention of depression and coordinates the the International Taskforce for preventing relapse of depression. As well as being a member of the scientific organising committee for the 2023 European Congress of Psychology and a board member of the European Association for Clinical Psychology and Psychotherapy where she focusses on dissemination and public engagement.

Recent Grants

• 2023: How to shift the dial for depression and anxiety prevention in young people? Re-imagining risk, personalised interventions and scalability. Prudence Trust Fellowship (2023 - 2026) - £475,000 (PI)
• 2022: Understanding overlaps in marginalisation in young people. Youth Futures Foundation - £57,000 (PI)
• 2022: What social connection, for which child and when affects the development of depression and anxiety in adolescents and young adults? Wellcome Mental Health Data Prize - £39,000 (PI)
• 2022: Understanding the Well-being and Mental Health of Caregivers and their Very Young Children in an Urban Context. Bernard van Leer Foundation - £55,000 (PI)
• 2021: Can we prevent depression and anxiety in adolescents and young adults by increasing neighbourhood social cohesion? Wellcome Active Ingredients Commission - £40,000 (PI)
• 2019: Determining effective relapse prevention strategies for recurrent depression and moderators of treatment outcome – what works for whom? Mental Health Alliance Fund. Amsterdam Public Health Research Institute – £8,323 (co-PI)
• 2019: UKRI-funded ‘Closing the Gap’ Network+ led by prof. Simon Gilbody. £1.2M - (Co-I)
• 2018: Empowering People with Psychosocial Disabilities’ Participation in Physical Exercise. Disability Research on Independent Living and Learning - £149,657.02 (PI)
• 2018: Moodbuster: A feasibility RCT to test an online CBT based intervention to prevent depression. Interreg North West Europe - £158,000 (co-PI)

Key Publications

• Breedvelt, J. J.F., Karyotaki, E., Warren, F. C., Brouwer, M. E., Jermann, F., Hollandare, F., ... & Bockting, C. L. (2024). An individual participant data meta-analysis of psychological interventions for preventing depression relapse. Nature Mental Health, 2(2), 154-163. https://doi.org/10.1038/s44220-023-00178-x
• Breedvelt, J. J. F., Tiemeier, H., Sharples, E., Galea, S., Niedzwiedz, C., Elliott, I., & Bockting, C. L. (2022). The effects of neighbourhood social cohesion on preventing depression and anxiety among adolescents and young adults: a rapid review. BJPsych Open, 8(4), e97. http://doi.org/10.1192/bjo.2022.57
• Bockting, C. L. H., Breedvelt, J. J. F., Brouwer, M. E. (2022). Relapse Prevention. In: Reference Module in Neuroscience and Biobehavioral Psychology. Elsevier. 10.1016/B978-0-12-818697-8.00224-7 (Book Chapter)
• Breedvelt, J. J. F., Brouwer, M., Harrer, M., Semkovska, M., Ebert, D., Cuijpers, P., & Bockting, C. (2021). Psychological interventions as an alternative and add-on to antidepressant medication to prevent depressive relapse: Systematic review and meta-analysis. The British Journal of Psychiatry,219(4), 538-545. https://doi.org/10.1192/bjp.2020.198
• Breedvelt, J. J. F., Warren, F. C., Segal, Z., Kuyken, W., & Bockting, C. L. (2021). Continuation of Antidepressants vs Sequential Psychological Interventions to Prevent Relapse in Depression: An Individual Participant Data Meta-analysis. JAMA psychiatry, 78(8), 868–875. https://doi.org/10.1001/jamapsychiatry.2021.0823
• Furukawa, T. A., Shinohara, K., Sahker, E., Karyotaki, E., Miguel, C., Ciharova, M., Bockting, C. L. H., Breedvelt, J. J. F., Tajika, A., Imai, H., Ostinelli, E. G., Sakata, M., Toyomoto, R., Kishimoto, S., Ito, M., Furukawa, Y., Cipriani, A., Hollon, S. D., & Cuijpers, P. (2021). Initial treatment choices to achieve sustained response in major depression: a systematic review and network meta-analysis. World Psychiatry, 20(3), 387–396. https://doi.org/https://doi.org/10.1002/wps.20906
• Breedvelt J. J . F., Yap, J, Eising, D. D., Ebert, D. D., Smit, F., Thorpe, L., Kousoulis, A. A. (2021). Promoting and Protecting Mental Health: A Delphi Consensus Study for Actionable Public Mental Health Messages. Am J Health Promot. Nov;35(8):1114-1120. http://doi/10.1177/0890117121998536
• Breedvelt, J. J. F., Zamperoni, V., South, E., Uphoff, E. P., Gilbody, S., Bockting, C. L. H., Churchill, R., & Kousoulis, A. A. (2020). A systematic review of mental health measurement scales for evaluating the effects of mental health prevention interventions. European Journal of Public Health, 30(3), 539–545. https://doi.org/10.1093/eurpub/ckz233
• Breedvelt, J. J. F., Zamperoni, V., Kessler, D., Riper, H., Kleiboer, A. M., Elliott, I., … Bockting, C. L. H. (2019). GPs’ attitudes towards digital technologies for depression: An online survey in primary care. British Journal of General Practice, 69(680), E164–E170. https://doi.org/10.3399/bjgp18X700721
• Breedvelt, J. J. F., Kandola, A., Kousoulis, A. A., Brouwer, M. E., Karyotaki, E., Bockting, C. L. H., & Cuijpers, P. (2018). What are the effects of preventative interventions on major depressive disorder (MDD) in young adults? A systematic review and meta-analysis of randomized controlled trials. Journal of Affective Disorders, 239, 18–29. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jad.2018.05.010
• Breedvelt, J. J. F., Rowe, S., Bowden-Jones, H., Shridhar, S., Lovett, K., Bockting, C., Lingford-Hughes, A., Strathdee, G., & Tracy, D. K. (2018). Unleashing talent in mental health sciences: gender equality at the top. The British Journal of Psychiatry, 213(6), 679–681. https://doi.org/10.1192/bjp.2018.249

 

All publications can be found here.