Prof. Pim Cuijpers

Pim Cuijpers is Professor emeritus of Clinical Psychology at the Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam, The Netherlands and director of the WHO Collaborating Centre for Research and Dissemination of Psychological Interventions in Amsterdam. He is specialised in conducting randomised controlled trials and meta-analyses on prevention and psychological treatments of common mental disorders across the life span. Much of his work is aimed at prevention of mental disorders, psychological treatments of depression and anxiety disorders, and Internet-delivered treatments. He has also published on several other research topics, including global mental health and student mental health. Pim Cuijpers has published almost 1,300 peer-reviewed papers, chapters, reports and professional publications, including more than 1,050 papers in international peer-reviewed scientific journals. He is on the Clarivate Web of Science lists of the ‘highly cited researchers’ since the first edition of this list in 2014 (http://highlycited.com). In Web of Science (Clarivate InCites Essential Science Indicators) he is currently ranked number 1 in the field of psychiatry/psychology as top author. According to Expertscape, an organisation that ranks researchers by their expertise in biomedial topics, professor Cuijpers is the world’s number one top expert on research on psychotherapy, the number one top expert on depression, and the number two on meta-analyses. Pim Cuijpers is Editor-in-Chief of the Journal of Consulting and Clinical Psychology and recently received the 2024 APA Award for Distinguished Professional Contributions to Applied Research.

https://www.webofscience.com/wos/author/record/G-1703-2013

More than 1,000 randomised controlled trials have examined the effects of psychotherapies for depression and many hundreds trials have examined the effects of psychotherapies for other mental disorders. At the same time, the effects of therapies are not increasing over time and have remained stable over the past decades. Innovation is therefore very much needed, especially since the disease burden of mental disorders in populations is very high. In this presentation, I will give an overview of the most important innovations in the field. Because there are many current innovations, it is not possible to cover them all. Therefore I will focus specifically on innovations in the digital field. A large body of research has shown that psychological interventions can be delivered effectively through the internet. In this presentation I will draw on our meta-analyses on psychological treatments and I will show what research says about the effects of psychotherapies for depression in general. I will also show what the effects are when therapies are delivered digitally. Furthermore, I will present the results of some of the studies in digital interventions in which I have been involved myself. I will also look into new developments, such as chatbots and conversational agents. Just-in-time interventions, serious games, virtual and augmented reality, prescription digital therapeutics and blended therapies.

• Cuijpers P, et al. (2024). Absolute and relative outcomes of psychotherapies for eight mental disorders: a systematic review and meta-analysis. World Psychiatry. 2024 Jun;23(2):267-275. doi: 10.1002/wps.21203.
• Cuijpers P, Noma H, Karyotaki E, Cipriani A, Furukawa TA. (2019). Effectiveness and Acceptability of Cognitive Behavior Therapy Delivery Formats in Adults With Depression: A Network Meta-analysis. JAMA Psychiatry. 2019;76(7):700–707. doi:10.1001/jamapsychiatry.2019.0268
• Cuijpers P, Harrer M, Miguel C, Ciharova M, Karyotaki E. (2023). Five Decades of Research on Psychological Treatments of Depression: A Historical and Meta-Analytic Overview. American Psychologist. Advance online publication.
• Cuijpers P. (2024). How to improve outcomes of psychological treatment of depression: Lessons from "next-level" meta-analytic research. American Psychologist, 79(9), 1407–1417.