Publications by authors named "Gerben Westerhof"

Introduction: Personality disorders (PDs) cause much suffering. In treating patients with PDs, it is important not only to focus on reducing symptoms, but also on promoting psychological adaptability and well-being. The experiential nature of Creative Arts and Psychomotor Therapies (CAPTs) contributes to working on psychological adaptability and improving well-being, although more evidence is needed.

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Objective: Counteracting feelings of loneliness among older adults underscores the need to improve social well-being, for example, by sharing small stories. Interestingly, virtual representation of nature (VN) can stimulate social aspirations and trigger associations, which could be used as conversational material. Especially nature's characteristics of mystery and spaciousness seem promising.

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Treatment assignment for patients with personality disorders (PDs) involves a complex process consisting of diagnostic assessment and deciding on the most appropriate psychotherapeutic treatment. This article describes the development of a checklist for systematic analysis of life stories to support reflective and transparent assignment of patients to either dialectical behavioral therapy (DBT) or schema-focused therapy (SFT). In a first study, an email survey, focus group, and member check were conducted among eight clinical experts to identify relevant dimensions in life stories in patients with PDs.

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Participating in a criminal trial may increase the likelihood of developing psychopathology. In 2021, people bereaved by a plane disaster (flight MH17) had the opportunity to deliver a victim personal statement (VPS) in Dutch court. This longitudinal mixed-method study examined different aspects of 84 bereaved people's experiences with VPS delivery.

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Objectives: Anxiety and mood disorders greatly affect the quality of life for individuals worldwide. A substantial proportion of patients do not sufficiently improve during evidence-based treatments in mental healthcare. It remains challenging to predict which patients will or will not benefit.

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To explore mental health associations during eating disorder (ED) treatment. Based on the dual-continua model of mental health, general and ED-specific psychopathology, as well as emotional, psychological, and social well-being were considered as mental health domains. Network analyses with panel data were applied to explore within- (temporal and contemporaneous networks) and between-person effects in a sample of 1250 female ED patients during 12 months of outpatient treatment.

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It is important to evaluate how residents, their significant others, and professional caregivers experience life in a nursing home to improve quality of care based on their needs and wishes. Narratives are a promising method to assess this experienced quality of care as they enable a rich understanding, reflection, and learning. In the Netherlands, narratives are becoming a more substantial element within the quality improvement cycle of nursing homes.

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The study explores the meanings that family caregivers of people with dementia ascribe to the past, present, and future of their role as a caregiver, and how their integration into caregiving trajectories is related to caregivers' burdens and gains. The sample was made up of 197 family caregivers ( = 62.1, = 12.

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Introduction: The ability to adapt is a core aspect of daily human life. Recent models and theories emphasize its essential role for health and well-being. It concerns the perceived ability to readjust and actively deal with the psychosocial consequences of challenging events.

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Background: An essential value in mental health care is compassion: awareness of suffering, tolerating difficult feelings in the face of suffering, and acting or being motivated to alleviate suffering. Currently, technologies for mental health care are on the rise and could offer several advantages, such as more options for self-management by clients and more accessible and economically viable care. However, digital mental health interventions (DMHIs) have not been widely implemented in daily practice.

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Introduction: Studying written life stories of patients with personality disorders (PDs) may enhance knowledge of how they understand themselves, others and the world around them. Comparing the construction of their life stories before psychotherapy to their reconstruction after psychotherapy may provide insight in therapeutic changes in the understandings of their lives.

Methods: As few studies addressed this topic, the current study explored changes in agency (i.

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Article Synopsis
  • * The analysis found a significant but small effect of subjective aging on health, indicating that people who feel younger generally have better health outcomes, but results varied widely across studies.
  • * The findings emphasize a need for future research to explore the connections between subjective aging and health further, specifically looking at how these relationships might work in both directions over time.
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The aim of the paper was to define what narrative care is and identify and discuss everyday conversational narrative care strategies regarding people living with dementia in long-term care institutional settings. To do so, we differentiate between two approaches to narrative care: a big-story approach (reflecting on life stories) and a small-story approach (enacting stories in everyday conservations). The paper is focused on the second approach, which appears to be particularly fit to be used with people living with dementia.

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Article Synopsis
  • - The study analyzed how eating disorder (ED) patients respond to treatment over a year, using data from 442 individuals at five different time points and focusing on ED psychopathology and well-being.
  • - Three distinct classes of ED psychopathology were identified: one group had high initial severity with slow recovery (55.9%), another had high severity followed by significant recovery (19.9%), and the last had moderate severity with no significant recovery (24.2%).
  • - For well-being, the classes included one with low initial levels and slow growth (44.6%), another with low initial levels and substantial growth (9.5%), and a stable moderate class (45.9%), highlighting the variability in change trajectories that could
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Nowadays, traditional forms of psychotherapy are increasingly complemented by online interactions between client and counselor. In (some) web-based psychotherapeutic interventions, meetings are exclusively online through asynchronous messages. As the active ingredients of therapy are included in the exchange of several emails, this verbal exchange contains a wealth of information about the psychotherapeutic change process.

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This position paper proposes a model for systematic integration of positive psychology interventions (PPIs) in mental healthcare. On the one hand, PPIs can contribute to the decrease of dysfunctional processes underlying mental illness. This evidence is at the core of the new domains of positive clinical psychology and positive psychiatry.

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Developing a good therapeutic alliance is considered essential for the responsible delivery of psychotherapy. Text-based digital psychotherapy has become increasingly common, yet much remains unclear about the alliance and its importance for delivering mental health care via a digital format. To employ text-based digital therapies responsibly, more insight is needed into the type and strength of the therapeutic alliance online.

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Background: Perceived well-being is key in the recovery from major depressive disorder (MDD). It is however unclear how well-being relates to other aspects of recovery, like depressive symptom severity, acceptance, disease identification and social participation. In patients with MDD we investigated 1) changes in these five concepts over time, 2) which concepts associate with well-being, and 3) whether a relationship between depressive symptoms and well-being is moderated by acceptance, disease identification and social participation.

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This paper describes a randomized controlled trial on the Online Life Story Book (OLSB), a digital reminiscence intervention for people with (very) mild dementia living at home. The aim of the study was to investigate the effectiveness of the OLSB on (i) neuropsychiatric symptoms (NPS) in persons with dementia and (ii) the distress and quality of life (QOL) of primary informal caregivers. A randomized controlled trial with individual randomization to one of two conditions was conducted: 1) intervention "Online Life Story Book"; 2) wait list control condition.

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Objective: Psychometric network analysis has led to new possibilities to assess the structure and dynamics of psychiatric disorders. The current study focuses on mental health networks in patients with anorexia nervosa, bulimia nervosa, binge eating disorder and other specified eating disorders (EDs).

Method: Network analyses were applied with five mental health domains (emotional, psychological and social well-being, and general and specific psychopathology) among 905 ED patients.

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Purpose: Personality functioning is strongly linked to well-being in the general population. Yet, there is a lack of scientific knowledge about the pathways between personality trait facets and emotional, psychological and social well-being in ED patients. The general aim was to examine potential associations between maladaptive personality trait facets and the three main dimensions of well-being.

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Personal recovery has become a guiding paradigm in mental health services. Most research on recovery is based on the exploration of personal stories of service users through verbal methods. As not everyone with psychiatric problems is able to verbally formulate a recovery narrative, the current study assesses personal recovery through PhotoVoice, with emphasis on visualisation, small stories and participation.

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Objective: In mental health care, treatment effects are commonly monitored by symptom severity measures. This study aimed to investigate the relationship between symptom severity and well-being in the treatment of patients with major depressive disorder (MDD).

Methods: Adult MDD outpatients (n = 77) were administered the Quick Inventory of Depressive Symptomatology-Self-Report (QIDS-SR), the Outcome Questionnaire (OQ-45), and the Mental Health Continuum-Short Form (MHC-SF) before treatment and 6 months later.

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Introduction: People with intellectual disability have a higher chance of developing mental disorders than the general population. Yet, few evidence-based interventions exist. This article evaluates My Lifestory, a narrative intervention tailored to people with intellectual disability and depressive or trauma-related complaints.

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