Wednesday September 21st
19:45 live music Downtown Grooves
20:15 speakers
Café Loburg
Resilience is the ability to resist or recover from a negative stressor. Resilience is currently a major theme in mental and physical health. If we know how to build resilience of mind and body, we may be able to prevent collapses and overcome setbacks. For instance, (top-)athletes are regularly exposed to stressors like heavy training sessions, performance pressures, and it is important to determine when athletes can(not) recover from those stressors. Similarly, for patients struggling with recurring depressions, it is relevant to understand the mechanisms behind maintaining health and resilience, and the factors that may play a role in eroding their mental resilience.
In this Science Cafe, our speakers Prof Claudi Bockting and Dr. Ruud den Hartigh will discuss these and other questions.
Prof. Claudi Bockting is a clinical psychologist and professor of Clinical Psychology in Psychiatry at Amsterdam University Medical Centers. She is the co-director of the Centre for Urban Mental Health at the University of Amsterdam. Her research focuses on common mental health disorders, such as depression, anxiety disorders, and substance abuse. She works on the development and testing of sustainable psychological interventions for depression and relapse. She is pioneering in the use of complex system methodology for understanding and treating common psychiatric disorders.
Dr. Ruud den Hartigh is an associate professor Talent Development and Creativity in the Faculty of Behavioural and Social Sciences at the University of Groningen. He is interested in human performance in sports and other achievement domains, such as the army. Den Hartigh has published many studies in the last couple of years on the development of talent, the selection of athletes, the dynamics of momentum, and resilience. He is the project leader of the muldidisciplinary “Resilient Athletes” project, funded by ZonMw, which centers around the question: how can professional sport players maintain and improve resilience in order to prevent physical or mental problems?