Noa van Zwieten is a PhD candidate at the psychiatry department of Amsterdam UMC, location VUmc. She graduated from the Research Master Clinical and Health Psychology at Leiden University (cum laude). Her research focuses on individual differences and temporal variability in affective and behavioral processes related to depressive and anxiety disorders. Within the Stress in Action project, she studies affective and behavioral responses to daily-life stress in relation to these disorders. Examples of her work include research on individual differences in physical activity and their associations with affect and depressive symptoms.

“Can two weeks of ambulatory data on physical activity and positive and negative affect distinguish individuals with different psychiatric statuses (i.e., those with vs. without a depressive and/or anxiety disorder)?”

This study is using data from the NESDA cohort to explore the temporal associations between actigraphy-assessed physical activity and EMA-assessed positive and negative affect in a sample comprised of individuals with depressive and/or anxiety disorders diagnosis, subthreshold depressive and/or anxiety symptoms, and asymptomatic individuals. The first aim is to examine how these associations differ between persons with current disorders, subthreshold disorders and asymptomatic individuals, using a confirmatory subgroup approach. The secondary aim is to identify data-driven subgroups based on similar patterns of within-person associations over time. Data-driven subgroups are compared to the confirmatory subgroups and each another regarding patient, sociodemographic, psychiatric clinical and daily characteristics.

PhD student,
Amsterdam UMC