Peter de Jonge | RUG

Core-applicant

Portrait photo of Peter de Jonge

Title(s)
Professor of Developmental Psychology

First name
Peter

Initials
P.

Last Name
de Jonge

FTE
0.4 fte/year for 10 years

Peter de Jonge (1969, PhD) is one of the top researchers in the Netherlands on the interface between psychology and psychiatry. He is programme leader of the research programme Interdisciplinary Centre Psychopathology and Emotion Regulation (ICPE, www.icpe.nl) (UMCG and RuG) and vice-dean of research of the Faculty Behavioral and Social Sciences (RuG). The ICPE is a centre of excellence conducting research at the crossroads of various disciplines, including psychiatry, psychology, epidemiology, neurosciences, and internal medicine. The programme currently consists of 9 full professors, 16 Associate/Assistant Professors and over 70 PhD students. At the last two research visitations, the ICPE received maximum scores on all evaluated parameters: relevance, societal impact, scientific quality and vitality.

Trained as a clinical psychologist and methodologist, his interest has been in connecting disciplines. In 2007, he received a prestigious VIDI grant to support his research on the interaction between depression and heart disease, which became a very successful project on which >70 publications were published. Many of these publications have been published in leading psychology (e.g. Psychological Medicine), psychiatry (e.g. American J Psychiatry, JAMA Psychiatry), cardiology (e.g. JACC) and general medical journals (e.g. JAMA, BMC Medicine), which helped to promote the field of cardiopsychology. Several of those papers have become highly cited papers according to Web of Science criteria. This line of research has demonstrated the lifelong interaction between depression and anxiety and the development and progression of ischemic heart disease. In 2012, he received a prestigious VICI grant (ranked first in the medical field), entitled Deconstructing Depression. In this project, his focus was on the difficulties surrounding the concept of depression as a consensus-based, symptom-oriented disorder. In this project, he worked together with mathematicians, physicists, biologists, philosophers, computer scientists and e-health specialists. This project helped to promote the use of EMA methodology while his view on psychopathology as continuous, dimensional processes that occur within persons instead of yes/no diagnoses based purely on inter-individual differences has inspired many researchers.

  • De Jonge has (co-)authored many international peer-reviewed articles (PubMed), Dutch articles and book chapters. The majority (>75%) of his papers have appeared in top 25% journals including JAMA, New Engl J Med, World Psychiatry, JAMA Psychiatry, BMC Med.
  • He has been involved as supervisor in many PhD projects (35 successfully finished (5 cum laude) and 7 ongoing). Many of his former students have pursued an academic career, and with many he continues to collaborate and/or to serve as a mentor.
  • He received >5 M€ on research funding including both a highly prestigious VIDI and VICI grant. In 2013, he received the Best Researcher of the Year price by the UMCG (100 K).
  • His national and international reputation is evidenced by his membership of various grant commissions, numerous invitations for keynote lectures and editorial board membership of the journals Health Psychology and BMC Medicine, both top 25% journals.
  • De Jonge initiated a crowdsourcing study called HowNutsAreTheDutch, in which >15,000 persons participated. Based on this study, a research grant of 1.2 M€ was provided by Dutch healthcare provider Espria, to develop an app that people can use to monitor their personal well-being. The massive uptake of this app and participation in ‘HoeGekIsNL’ demonstrates the impact of his work.
  • He is involved in the World Health Organisation World Mental Health Surveys Initiative as representative for the Netherlands and as leader of the mental co-morbidity workgroup. He recently acted as co-editor of the book Cross-national Epidemiology of Mental Disorders: Facts and Figures from the World Mental Health Surveys (eds Scott, De Jonge, Stein, Kessler, 2018. Cambridge University Press).
  • Since 2009, De Jonge is co-directing the research programme Interdisciplinary Centre Psychopathology and Emotion regulation (ICPE) (with prof AJ Oldehinkel). The ICPE is one of the national top-centres combining psychology and psychiatry. During the last two research visitations, the ICPE received maximum score on all evaluated aspects (quality, relevance to society and viability) and is considered world leading, as evidenced among others by the fact that about 80% of the 100-150 scientific papers published each year are in Q1 and 30-50% in top 10%.
  • De Jonge’s work received a lot of media coverage (see for instance www.hoegekis.nl/nieuws), including a special issue in Volkskrant Magazine and articles in Psychologie Magazine and Psychologie Quest, and he gave many presentations for lay audiences in order to educate and discuss with the general population. Importantly, the projects HoeGekIsNL and Leefplezier have helped a substantial number of persons gaining insights in their personal emotion dynamics without using DSM-based psychiatric diagnosis and associated labelling.

  1. de Jonge P, Ormel, J; van den Brink, RHS; et al. Symptom dimensions of depression following myocardial infarction and their relationship with somatic health status and cardiovascular prognosis. American Journal of Psychiatry 2006;163:138-144.
  2. de Jonge P, Rosmalen JG, Kema IP, Doornbos B, van Melle JP, Pouwer F, Kupper N. Psychophysiological biomarkers explaining the association between depression and prognosis in coronary artery patients: a critical review of the literature. Neuroscience Biobehavioral Reviews 2010;35:84-90.
  3. Scott KM, de Jonge P, Stein DJ, Kessler RC (eds). Mental disorders around the world. Facts and figures from the WHO World Mental Health Surveys. Cambridge University Press, 2017.
  4. van der Krieke L, Blaauw FJ, Emerencia AC, Schenk HM, Slaets JP, Bos EH, de Jonge P, Jeronimus BF. Temporal Dynamics of Health and Well-Being: A crowdsourcing approach to momentary assessments and automated generation of personalised feedback. Psychosomatic Medicine 2017;79:213-223.
  5. Momen NC, Plana-Ripoll O, Agerbo E, Benros ME, Børglum AD, Christensen MK, Dalsgaard S, Degenhardt L, de Jonge P, Debost JPG, Fenger-Grøn M, Gunn JM, Iburg KM, Kessing LV, Kessler RC, Laursen TM, Lim CCW, Mors O, Mortensen PB, Musliner KL, Nordentoft M, Pedersen CB, Petersen LV, Ribe AR, Roest AM, Saha S, Schork AJ, Scott KM, Sievert C, Sørensen HJ, Stedman TJ, Vestergaard M, Vilhjalmsson B, Werge T, Weye N, Whiteford HA, Prior A, McGrath JJ. Association between Mental Disorders and Subsequent Medical Conditions. New England Journal of Medicine 2020;382(18):1721-1731.
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