Division of Clinical Psychology and Psychopathology

The Division of Clinical Psychology and Psychopathology is primarily concerned with teaching and research on etiology and treatment of mental disorders. Research is conducted in the Clinical Stress and Emotion Lab and comprises anxiety disorders, posttraumatic stress disorders and depression.

To uncover both etiological and maintaining mechanisms of disorders, methods of clinical psychology, as well as emotion and stress research approaches are mainly applied. These research directions aim at the identification of risk- and resilience factors of highly prevalent mental disorders, like posttraumatic stress disorder, panic disorder and major depression. Discoveries from this research are utilized to develop and test innovative cognitive-behavioral interventions.

In addition, the  Clinical Stress and Emotion Lab functions as a teaching laboratory, training Master students, PhD students, postdocs and visiting researchers in the elicitation and analysis of stress- and emotion-relevant processes to gain an overarching perspective for understanding mental disorders. Measurement methods include clinical interviews, questionnaires, psychophysiology, hormone sampling, polysomnography and neuroimaging. Laboratory experiments are extended by ambulatory daily life assessments via smartphones to capture symptoms in real time and enhance ecological validity. Innovative experimental paradigms, measurement methods and data analysis methods are developed to enhance scientific productivity.