Marloes Kleinjan

• Ph.D
• Trimbos-instituut & Utrecht University

Background Worldwide, cocaine use and availability is very high by historical standards. People who use cocaine are exposed to physical and mental health risks. Prevention activities for this group traditionally focus on harm reduction, but research suggests there are opportunities for the deployment of interventions aimed at the reduction or cessa...

Educators frequently grapple with elevated levels of job-related stress, heightening the risk of mental health issues. Although Mindfulness-Based Stress Reduction (MBSR) has demonstrated effectiveness in reducing stress among the general populace, its implementation among educators, especially in non-United States settings, has received limited exp...

Background The COVID‐19 pandemic negatively affected child and adolescent mental health and at the end of the pandemic (April 2022) child mental health had not returned to pre‐pandemic levels. We investigated whether this observed increase in mental health problems has continued, halted, or reversed after the end of the pandemic in children from th...

Background The COVID-19 pandemic negatively affected child and adolescent mental health and at the end of the pandemic (April 2022) child mental health had not returned to pre‐pandemic levels. We investigated whether this observed increase in mental health problems has continued, halted, or reversed after the end of the pandemic in children from th...

Introduction: This study offers insights into Dutch young people's expected social and personal consequences of ecstasy use. Substance use expectancies are assumed to be an essential component in explaining substance use behaviour and, therefore, the development of effective substance use prevention and treatment strategies. Method: Dutch young...

Background The COVID‐19 pandemic has had an acute impact on child mental and social health, but long‐term effects are still unclear. We examined how child mental health has developed since the start of the COVID‐19 pandemic up to 2 years into the pandemic (April 2022). Methods We included children (age 8–18) from two general population samples (N...

Objective Augmented reality (AR) is a rapidly developing technology that has substantial potential as a novel approach for addiction treatment, including tobacco use. AR can facilitate the delivery of cue exposure therapy (CET) such that individuals can experience the treatment in their natural environments as viewed via a smartphone screen, addres...

Introduction Although parental support is an important component in programs designed to prevent overweight in children, current programs pay remarkably little attention to the role of parenting. We therefore developed a web-based parenting program entitled “Making a healthy deal with your child”. This e-learning program can be incorporated into ex...

The Netherlands is missing nationally representative data on child and adolescent mental health, e.g., on prevalence, course, and consequences of psychological disorders and mental health care utilization. Researchers and policy makers also lack a basic data infrastructure that is necessary to provide timely and reliable data crucial for benchmarki...

Background The COVID-19 pandemic has had an acute impact on child mental and social health, but long-term effects are still unclear. We examined how child mental health has developed since the start of the COVID-19 pandemic up to two years into the pandemic (April 2022). Methods We included children (age 8-18) from two general population samples (N...

Objective: Cue-exposure therapy (CET) aims to extinguish conditioned cue reactivity (CR) to aid in smoking cessation. A key disadvantage of extant CET is its limited ability to generalize extinction to the real world. Our team developed a set of augmented reality smoking-related and neutral cues that can appear in real-time in smokers' natural env...

Background: This systematic review provides an overview of studies on latent classes related to the substance use among young adults (18–25 years). Identifying these classes helps to detect high-risk groups, setting a base for selective prevention. Methods: This systematic literature review included peer-reviewed studies (published up to February,...

Background Review studies increasingly emphasize the importance of the role of parenting in interventions for preventing overweight in children. The aim of this study was to examine typologies regarding how consistently parents apply energy-balance related behavior rules, and the association between these typologies and socio-demographic characteri...

BACKGROUND The high prevalence and adverse consequences of excessive drinking among lower educated adolescents and young adults is a public concern in the Netherlands. Evidence-based alcohol prevention programs targeting adolescents and young adults with a low educational background are sparse. OBJECTIVE The present study describes the planned pro...

Background The high prevalence and adverse consequences of excessive drinking among lower-educated adolescents and young adults are public concerns in the Netherlands. Evidence-based alcohol prevention programs targeting adolescents and young adults with a low educational background are sparse. Objective This study aimed to describe the planned pr...

Background Depression is one of the leading causes of illness and disability among young people. In the Netherlands, one in twelve Dutch adolescents has experienced depression in the last 12 months. Pre-vocational students are at higher risk for elevated depressive symptoms. Effective interventions, especially for this risk group, are therefore nee...

Rejection consists of a range of behaviors from ignoring another to explicitly excluding someone from an encounter. Currently available experimental tasks have shown that rejection has strong emotional, behavioral, and physical effects, but the tasks have some limitations. We argue that video games can address these limitations and have developed a...

Background Recently, the parent-tailored telephone based smoking cessation counseling program ‘Smoke-free Parents’ was shown to be effective in helping parents to quit smoking. To implement this program in child healthcare settings in the Netherlands, the research team developed a proactive referral tool to refer parents to Smoke-free Parents. The...

PurposeThis prospective population-based study investigated whether having any internalizing mental disorder (INT) was associated with the presence and onset of any cardiometabolic disorder (CM) at 3-year follow-up; and vice versa. Furthermore, we examined whether observed associations differed when using longer time intervals of respectively 6 and...

Introduction: Despite its well-established negative effects, environmental tobacco smoke (ETS) exposure remains highly prevalent worldwide. ETS exposure is associated with a wide range of physical and mental health-related problems among youth, including an increased likelihood to develop nicotine dependence. Up till now, neurocognitive effects of...

Reduced anticipatory reward-related activity, especially in the ventral striatum (VS), may underly adolescent vulnerability to develop nicotine dependence. It remains unclear whether nicotine uptake caused by environmental tobacco smoke (ETS) exposure, known to be associated with future smoking, might prompt similar changes in the brain's reward sy...

Introduction: A meta-analysis was conducted to examine the effectiveness of smoking cessation interventions tailored to parents of children aged 0-18 years. Methods: A systematic search was carried out in PsycInfo, Embase, and PubMed in March 2020. A manual search of the reference lists of the included studies and systematic reviews related to t...

Introduction: Recently, a Dutch proactive parent-tailored telephone smoking cessation counselling program, Smoke-free Parents (SFP), was demonstrated to be effective in helping parents to quit smoking. This study aimed to examine the program's uptake and the costs of two recruitment approaches (i.e. healthcare vs mass media) for SFP. In addition,...

Background: Studies on feedback in youth mental health care are scarce and implementation of feedback into clinical practice is problematic. Objective: To investigate potentially effective components of feedback from Routine Outcome Monitoring (ROM) in youth mental health care in the Netherlands through a three arm, parallel-group, randomized contr...

Background: Depressive symptoms are highly prevalent among adolescents in Western countries. However, although treatment for depressive symptoms is available, many adolescents do not seek help when they need it. Important barriers to help-seeking among adolescents include low mental health literacy and high stigma. Therefore, we have developed a g...

Background: The quality of the therapeutic alliance is an important factor in the treatment of both adult and adolescent patients in psychiatry. Little is known about the importance of the therapeutic alliance among youths who seek help for their substance abuse problems in addiction treatment. Aim: We investigated the importance of first treatm...

Background The recent widespread availability of augmented reality via smartphone offers an opportunity to translate cue exposure therapy for smoking cessation from the laboratory to the real world. Despite significant reductions in the smoking rates in the last decade, approximately 13.7% of the adults in the United States continue to smoke. Smoki...

Background Cue exposure for extinguishing conditioned urges to smoking cues has been promising in the laboratory, but difficult to implement in natural environments. The recent availability of augmented reality (AR) via smartphone provides an opportunity to overcome this limitation. Testing the ability of AR to elicit cue-provoked urges to smoke (i...

Previous research shows that crises can have both negative and positive mental health effects on the population. The current study explored these effects in the context of the COVID-19 pandemic after relaxation of governmental measures. An online survey was administered among a representative sample of the Dutch population (n = 1519) in June 2020,...

We investigated the potential role of first-session therapeutic alliance ratings to serve as an early marker of treatment outcome in youth mental health and addiction treatment. The present study is among the first to incorporate both a youths’ and a therapists’ perspective of the therapeutic alliance in order to maximize predictive value of the al...

Background Data on episode duration of anxiety disorders are required for informing patients and for disease management, but such data from population studies are lacking. Methods Three‐year longitudinal data were used from the Netherlands Mental Health Survey and Incidence Study‐2, a psychiatric epidemiological cohort study among the general adul...

Purpose Limited longitudinal population-based research exists on the bidirectional association between loneliness and common mental disorders (CMDs). Using 3-year follow-up data, this study examined whether loneliness among adults increases the risk for onset and persistence of mild–moderate or severe CMD; and whether mild–moderate or severe CMD is...

Previous research shows that crises can produce both negative and positive mental health effects. The current study explored these effects in context of the COVID-19 pandemic. An online survey was administered among a representative sample of the Dutch population (n = 1519) in June 2020, when the peak of COVID-19 cases was ten weeks past. Participa...

Shortly after young adolescents initiate alcohol use, we investigated whether (1) drinking motives are associated with current alcohol use and binge drinking, (2) motives predict these alcohol outcomes 6 months later, and (3) alcohol outcomes predict motives 6 months later. Data on adolescents' drinking motives and alcohol use were drawn from a Dut...

Samenvatting De afgelopen decennia is sterk ingezet op het terugdringen van tabaks- en alcoholgebruik onder jongeren. Monitoring is belangrijk om te toetsen of uitgezet beleid gepaard gaat met het gewenste resultaat. Met gegevens van het Peilstationsonderzoek Scholieren wordt onderzocht hoe het tabaks- en alcoholgebruik onder scholieren van twaalf...

Introduction Brain functioning, as indexed by event‐related potentials (ERPs) representing smoking cue reactivity, inhibitory control, and reward processing, has been found to be compromised in smokers. However, whether environmental tobacco smoke (ETS) exposure in never smokers results in similar brain changes is unknown. This question is particul...

BACKGROUND The recent widespread availability of augmented reality via smartphone offers an opportunity to translate cue exposure therapy for smoking cessation from the laboratory to the real world. Despite significant reductions in the smoking rates in the last decade, approximately 13.7% of the adults in the United States continue to smoke. Smoki...

Augmented reality (AR) is a rapidly emerging technology that superimposes digital objects onto real-world scenes as viewed in real time through a smartphone, tablet, or headset. Whereas AR has been adopted for retail, entertainment, and professional training, it also has potential as a novel, mobile, and efficacious treatment modality for psycholog...

Introduction The subjective effects of alcohol, i.e., alcohol expectancies (AE), are important predictors of alcohol use. This three-year longitudinal study examined: 1) the development of enhancement, social, coping, and conformity AE from age 10–16; 2) the association between parental alcohol use exposure and positive AE among adolescents and bet...

Aims: Limited cross-sectional studies have indicated that young children have some knowledge of the type of situations in which adults usually consume alcohol. However, it is unclear when and how this knowledge develops over time. This study tests the hypothesis that between the ages of 4 and 8, children become more knowledgeable about common drin...

Background To increase our understanding of the effect of parenting on the child’s likelihood of becoming overweight, we attempted to identify typologies based on how consistently parents apply dietary and sedentary behavior rules, and we examined whether these typologies are associated with energy balance-related behaviors in children and/or with...

A recent Dutch efficacy trial showed the efficacy of a telephone smoking cessation counseling tailored to smoking parents. Currently, it is unknown whether such telephone counseling would be effective under more real-world conditions. This study aimed to examine the effectiveness of parent-tailored telephone smoking cessation counseling in a two-ar...

Background: Alcohol expectancies (AE), that is, the anticipated effects of alcohol, start developing early in childhood and are important predictors of alcohol use years later. Whereas previous research has demonstrated that parental drinking relates to children's AE, this study aims to test whether exposure to parental alcohol use mediates the li...

Introduction: It has been proposed that the use of cue-reminders may increase the effectiveness of interventions that aim to prevent health-risk behaviors (i.e., having unsafe sex, unhealthy dietary intake, lack of physical activity, and substance use). The aim of this systematic review was to explore whether there is evidence supporting this propo...

Background: Smoking cessation during pregnancy and preventing relapse postpartum is a pivotal public health priority. Objectives: This study examined the risk and protective indicators of women who (a) smoke before pregnancy, (b) smoke during the entire pregnancy, (c) successfully quit smoking during pregnancy, and (d) relapse postpartum. Method: T...

Childhood maltreatment (CM) is a strong predictor of incident (first-onset and recurrent) mental disorders in adulthood. However, less is known about underlying mechanisms and moderators of these associations. This study examines to what extent vulnerability characteristics (low social support, negative life events, parental psychopathology, neurot...

BACKGROUND: The naturalistic course of major depressive disorder (mdd) and risk indicators for recurrence and chronicity of mdd are best investigated using a psychiatric epidemiological population study without clear selection bias. However, such studies are scarce, thereby limiting clinical decision-making concerning the monitoring and maintenance...

Objective: The aim of the present study was to test the link between exposure to parental alcohol use (i.e., preteens seeing their parents drinking) and preteen's alcohol use. Specifically, this study aimed to (a) replicate the association between parental alcohol use and preteen alcohol use and (b) test whether alcohol use exposure mediated this...

Background: Information on the natural course of subthreshold depression and risk factors for the development of a full-blown depressive disorder in the general population is scarce. This information is crucial to understand the development of depression and to advance indicated depression prevention. Methods: Using longitudinal data from a repr...

BACKGROUND The prevalence of elevated depressive symptoms among youth in most western societies is high. Yet, most adolescents who are experiencing depressive symptoms do not seek help. Low mental health literacy, high stigma, and low social support have been shown to hinder help-seeking. A small number of interventions has been developed to target...

Background: The prevalence of elevated depressive symptoms among youth in most western societies is high. Yet, most adolescents who are experiencing depressive symptoms do not seek help. Low mental health literacy, high stigma, and low social support have been shown to hinder help-seeking. A small number of interventions has been developed to targ...

Background: Relatively little research has been conducted that can reliably be used by psychiatrists, psychologists and general practitioners to estimate the recovery time of their patients suffering from depression. The treatment guideline for depression submits that half of those with mdd will recover within three months. AIM: To present the fin...

Objective The naturalistic course of major depressive disorder (MDD) and risk indicators for recurrence and chronicity are best studied using a population sample without clear selection bias. However, such studies are scarce. This limits clinical decision‐making concerning monitoring and maintenance treatment. Method Data were used from the Nether...

Purpose: Developmental changes in alcohol expectancies (AE) have been proposed to lead to alcohol use initiation and later alcohol use in adolescence. This systematic review aims to provide longitudinal evidence of the development of AE and the relation of AE to alcohol outcomes from childhood to late adolescence (4-18 years old). Methods: A com...

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In order to enhance young people's motivation to participate in depression and anxiety prevention programs, video games are being developed. However, the conditions under which these games are motivating and by extension more effective are unclear. Therefore, we examine if youth's affective experience changes when they are aware of the mental healt...

Detrimental health consequences of smoking for both parents and children stress the importance for parents to quit. A Dutch efficacy trial supported the efficacy of proactive telephone counseling on parents. Still, how this program would function in “real world” conditions and how parents could be optimally reached is unclear. Therefore, this study...

Background: Limited research is available on children's alcohol-related knowledge and alcohol-related norms, yet a better comprehension of these factors may be crucial in explaining alcohol use later in life. This study provides insights into alcohol-related knowledge and alcohol-related norms in 4- to 6-year-olds. Methods: Participating childre...

Objectives: Hardcore smokers have smoked for many years and do not intend to quit. They also seem unreceptive to information about smoking cessation. We developed a 30-min, tailored web-based intervention that includes motivational interviewing principles. It aims to increase hardcore smokers' intention to quit and their receptivity to information...

Background: This systematic review aims to summarize the evidence of the impact of parental alcohol use on the acquisition of children's alcohol-related cognitions (alcohol-related knowledge, alcohol-related norms, alcohol expectancies) in the developmental period from age two to ten. Methods: A computer-assisted systematic literature search was...

Objectives Previous research established that emotional exhaustion - the often assumed core dimension of burnout - diminishes job-related functioning, but knowledge of its association with functioning and health care utilization is largely lacking. Moreover, as exhaustion frequently co-occurs with mood and anxiety disorders (i.e. common mental diso...

Objective: Hardly any studies exist on the duration of major depressive disorder (MDD) and factors that explain variations in episode duration that lack biases. This limits clinical decision-making and leaves patients wondering when they will recover. Method: Data were used from the Netherlands Mental Health Survey and Incidence Study-2, a psych...

Aim To explore whether specific groups of adolescents (i.e., scoring high on personality risk traits, having a lower education level, or being male) benefit more from the Preventure intervention with regard to curbing their drinking behaviour. Design A clustered randomized controlled trial, with participants randomly assigned to a 2-session coping...

Childhood anxiety is a problem not only because of its negative consequences on the well-being of children but also because of its adverse effects on society and its role in mental disorders later in life. Adequate prevention might be the key in tackling this problem. The effectiveness of Coping Cat, as an indicated CBT-based prevention program in...

Background: Depression during adolescence is a serious mental health problem. Difficulties in regulating evoked emotions after stressful life events are considered to lead to depression. This study examined if depressive symptoms were mediated by various cognitive emotion regulation strategies after stressful life events, more specifically, the lo...

As restructuring a negative cognitive style is a central skill taught in many depression prevention programs, we tested whether a universal prevention program evoked a change in negative cognitive style in adolescents. In addition, we examined distinct developmental trajectories of negative cognitive styles and assessed whether research condition (...

Background Hardcore smokers are smokers who have smoked for many years and who do not intend to quit smoking. The “hardening hypothesis” states that light smokers are more likely to quit smoking than heavy smokers (such as hardcore smokers). Therefore, the prevalence of hardcore smoking among smokers would increase over time. If this is true, the s...

RationaleGiven that most attempts to quit smoking fail, it is critical to increase knowledge about the mechanisms involved in smoking relapse and resumption (i.e., the increase in smoking over time after a quit attempt). Neurocognitive measures, such as event-related potentials (ERPs), may provide novel insights into smoking relapse and resumption....

Objective and background: Insomnia is a neglected topic in psychiatric epidemiological studies. Despite the fact that insomnia is a common phenomenon and usually co-occurs with mental disorders, it remains to be addressed to what extent insomnia is associated with remitted and current common mental disorders and with impaired functioning in the po...

Background Despite increasing knowledge of the prevalence of borderline personality disorder (BPD) in the general population, and rising awareness of mental disorders both as a categorical and a dimensional construct, research is still lacking on the prevalence of the number of BPD symptoms and their associated consequences, such as comorbidity, di...

Objective A recent line of studies suggests that repeated exposure to environmental tobacco smoke (ETS) is capable of producing psycho-behavioural effects in non-smokers. Method We examined the association between environmental smoking and occurrence of psycho-behavioural symptoms, designed to assess nicotine addiction, in a sample of 778 never-smo...

Background: The Evidence-Based Practice Attitude Scale (EBPAS) was developed in the United States to assess attitudes of mental health and welfare professionals toward evidence-based interventions. Although the EBPAS has been translated in different languages and is being used in several countries, all research on the psychometric properties of th...

Among adolescent novice smokers, craving is often the first, and is the most reported, symptom of nicotine dependence. Until now, little has been known about the development of craving symptoms in novice smokers. The aim of this study was to identify specific genetic (i.e., DRD2 Taq1A, DRD4 48 bp VNTR, and OPRM1 A118G polymorphisms) and environment...

Background: In recent years, researchers have used various techniques to elucidate the heterogeneity in depressive symptoms. This study seeks to resolve the extent to which variations in depression reflect qualitative differences between symptom categories and/or quantitative differences in severity. Methods: Data were used from the Netherlands...

Experiencing depressive symptoms during adolescence is associated with various detrimental outcomes during this developmental stage and with future depression in adulthood. This finding highlights the importance to identify risk and protective factors in the development of depressive symptoms during adolescence. Adaptive parenting practices are ass...

Introduction: Hardcore smokers are smokers who have little to no intention to quit. Previous research suggests that there are distinct subgroups among hardcore smokers and that these subgroups vary in the perceived pros and cons of smoking and quitting. Identifying these subgroups could help to develop individualized messages for the group of hard...

Background Substance use and abuse is a growing problem among adolescents with mild to borderline intellectual disabilities (ID). Substance use patterns in general population are similar to patterns among non-disabled peers, but substance use has more negative consequences for adolescents with mild to borderline ID, and they are at an increased ris...

This study examined adolescent personality and problem behaviours as predictors of two types of social status: social preference and popularity. Academic track (college preparatory and vocational) and gender were expected to moderate these associations. The sample included 693 students (49.0% female; M = 15.46 years) attending classrooms in two aca...

Previous research has established that cognitive theory-based depression prevention programs aiming change in negative cognitive style in early adolescents do not have strong effects in universal settings. Although theories suggest that a negative cognitive style precedes depressive symptoms, empirical findings are mixed. We hypothesized that negat...

The effectiveness of Preventure was tested on drinking behaviour of young adolescents in secondary education in The Netherlands. A cluster randomized controlled trial was carried out, with participants randomly assigned to a 2-session coping skills intervention or a control no-intervention condition. Fifteen secondary schools throughout The Netherl...

Depressive symptoms tend to increase in adolescence, and have been associated with the development of a negative cognitive style. Cognitive theories postulate that a negative cognitive style precedes the development of depressive symptoms while other theories suggest a negative cognitive style is a consequence. We examined the reciprocal relationsh...

BACKGROUND The purpose of this study was to examine the association between adolescents' body mass index (BMI) z-scores and their subsequent level of schooling, extending previous longitudinal research by using objectively measured weight and height data. METHODSA longitudinal study with 3 study waves (1-year intervals) involving 1248 Dutch adolesc...

The study investigated the long-term effectiveness of the adolescent cognitive behavioral resiliency training Op Volle Kracht (OVK) on the secondary outcomes: anxiety symptoms, hopelessness, happiness, life satisfaction, optimism, coping, self-efficacy, and school functioning. In addition, the study analyzed whether the secondary outcomes moderated...

Objective: Several cessation treatments effectively enhance cessation, but it is not always clear which treatment may be most suitable for a particular client. We examined predictors of treatment outcome and treatment moderators among smoking parents in the Netherlands. Method: We conducted secondary analyses of a randomized controlled trial in...

Alcohol use and depressive feelings are often related among early adolescents. However, the nature and underlying mechanisms of this association are not yet clear. The aim of this study was to investigate the co-development of alcohol use and depressive feelings over time and to examine the effects of the mu-opioid receptor (OPRM1) A118G genotype o...

Background: Parental smoking is associated with an increased risk of smoking among youth. Epidemiological research has shown that parental smoking cessation can attenuate this risk. This study examined whether telephone counselling for parents and subsequent parental smoking cessation affect smoking-related cognitions and smoking initiation among...

Sport participation is especially important for patients with asthma in that it decreases psychosocial and physiological problems associated with inactivity. However, adolescents with asthma seem to participate less in sports compared to their non-asthmatic peers. The current study tested the direct associations between maternal sport-specific fact...

Background Few studies have examined why smoking cessation interventions are effective. The aim of this study was to examine the mediating processes underlying the effectiveness of cessation counseling administered by the Dutch national quitline. Methods Data were used in a two-arm randomized controlled trial in which smoking parents, who were rec...

Objective: The present study examined the longitudinal relations between illness perceptions and asthma control and emotional problems (i.e., anxiety, depression, stress), respectively, in adolescents with asthma. Furthermore, the mediating effects of asthma-specific coping strategies on these relations were examined, as specified in the Common Se...

The continuity, co-occurrence, and co-development of child internalizing and externalizing problems have been extensively studied and considered to be causally related either directly (directional model) or indirectly through an underlying shared or related liability factor (common vulnerability model). This study used child self-report to avoid ra...