Silvia Schneider

Ruhr-Universität Bochum | RUB · Mental Health Research and Treatment Center, Clinical Child and Adolescent Psychology

Background: Clinical diagnoses determine if and how therapists treat their patients. As misdiagnoses can have severe adverse effects, disseminating evidence-based diagnostic skills into clinical practice is highly important. Objective: This study aimed to develop and evaluate a blended learning course in a multicenter cluster randomized controlled...

Background As summarized by the Lancet Psychiatry Commission on youth mental health (McGorry et al., 2024), the statistics on mental disorders in children are alarming and highlight the need to expand and optimize research on childhood mental health. Although patient and public involvement (PPI) of those affected has the potential to boost both the...

The broaden-and-build theory is a prominent framework in positive psychology that considers positive emotions as essential for human flourishing. The theory does not specify the origins of positive emotions during development, although experiences in the first years of life are considered influential for long-term adjustment and well-being. Here, w...

Anxiety disorders (AD) are associated with altered connectivity in large-scale intrinsic brain networks. It remains uncertain how much these signatures overlap across different phenotypes due to a lack of well-powered cross-disorder comparisons. We used resting-state functional magnetic resonance imaging (rsfMRI) to investigate differences in funct...

Having control over your own behavior and impulses is a critical skill that influences children’s academic, social, and emotional development. This study investigates the stability and predictive relationships between parents’ ratings of their own and their children’s executive function and delay aversion. Using data from approximately 1700 familie...

Introduction Germany and the European Union have experienced successive waves of refugees since 2014, resulting in over 1.6 million arrivals, including families with young children. These vulnerable populations often face xenophobia, discrimination, substandard living conditions and limited healthcare access, contributing to a high prevalence of me...

Objective: Specific phobia is a common anxiety disorder, but the literature on associated brain structure alterations exhibits substantial gaps. The ENIGMA Anxiety Working Group examined brain structure differences between individuals with specific phobias and healthy control subjects as well as between the animal and blood-injection-injury (BII) s...

Self-regulation is a critical skill that influences children's academic, social, and emotional development. This study investigates the stability and predictive relationships between parents' ratings of their own and their children's self-regulation abilities, focusing on executive function and delay aversion due to their strong association with co...

Objective: Specific phobia is a common anxiety disorder, but the literature on associated brain structure alterations exhibits substantial gaps. The ENIGMA Anxiety Working Group examined brain structure differences between individuals with specific phobias and healthy control subjects as well as between the animal and blood-injection-injury (BII)...

Background Children and adolescents demonstrate diverse patterns of symptom change and disorder remission following cognitive behavioural therapy (CBT) for anxiety disorders. To better understand children who respond sub‐optimally to CBT, this study investigated youths (N = 1,483) who continued to meet criteria for one or more clinical anxiety diag...

Aim The positive dimension of mental health should be considered to assess the complete state of a person’s mental health and to protect it. Very brief valid screening instruments implemented in general mental health programs and in therapeutic setting are supportive tools hereby. In the present work, we aimed to develop such tools. Subject and me...

Episodic foresight (EFT) helps to anticipate and to prepare for the upcoming opportunities of the 21st century. The present study aimed to investigate how personality, temperament and family context contribute to individual differences in EFT and to an age effect on EFT in N = 162 children aged between 3 and 7 years. In an online-study, parents rep...

Although negative effects of psychological interventions are suspected to be common, they are rarely investigated. Experts and international guidelines agree that monitoring for negative effects in clinical studies is needed to make psychological interventions safer and to empower patients before they give their consent to participate. Therefore, m...

Envisioning the future and how you may feel (affective episodic future thinking [EFT]) helps adults to act in favor for their future self, according to manifold experiments. The current study tested whether and how affective EFT also helps children to behave more proactively, that is, to self-initially prepare for an upcoming event. Five-year-old (...

We investigated how apparent threat of an ambiguous stimuli modulates infants’ looking to interaction partners of varying familiarity (mother, familiar experimenter, unfamiliar experimenter). We hypothesized a preference for familiar informants under higher apparent threat, but a preference for unfamiliar informants under lower apparent threat. The...

Depression, anxiety and stress symptoms cause substantial psychological and economic burdens around the globe. To mitigate the negative consequences, the negative symptoms should be identified at an early stage. Therefore, the implementation of very brief valid screening tools in mental health prevention programs and in therapeutic settings is adva...

Patient and public involvement (PPI) is an essential ethical component in mental health research, and represents a major opportunity to improve translational mental health research. The goals of this review were to (1) provide a comprehensive overview of empirical research focusing on PPI of children and young people (CYP) in mental health research...

Background International clinical guidelines recommend Family Interventions (FIs) especially for families of people at early stages of psychosis. The German S3 treatment guideline for schizophrenia gives FIs the highest level of clinical recommendation. However, some family relatives have limited access to these services due to health system constr...

Theoretical Background: Positive mental health is not simply the absence of a mental disorder. We need a better understanding of the development of mental health, particularly if we are to better understand prevention, remission, and relapse in the context of mental disorders. To date, no measurement tool exists that captures positive mental health...

The present study is a follow-up of a prior study examining a broad range of longitudinal predictors of dimensional positive mental health (PMH) and negative mental health (NMH), using cross-cultural data from the Bochum Optimism and Mental Health (BOOM) study. The present study sought to expand prior findings on positive mental health predictors t...

Anxiety disorders (AD) are associated with altered connectivity in large-scale intrinsic brain networks. The extent to which these signatures are shared across different phenotypes remains unclear, as well-powered transdiagnostic comparisons are still largely missing. We used resting-state functional magnetic resonance imaging (rsfMRI) to investiga...

Zusammenfassung: Theoretischer Hintergrund: Suizidales Erleben und Verhalten ist unter Kindern und Jugendlichen sehr verbreitet. Im deutschsprachigen Raum existiert gleichwohl kein validierter Fragebogen zur Erfassung von Suizidgedanken, -absichten, -plänen und -versuchen. Fragestellung: In der vorliegenden Studie wurde die Skala Suizidales Erleben...

BACKGROUND Clinical diagnoses determine if and how therapists treat their patients. As misdiagnoses can have severe adverse effects, disseminating evidence-based diagnostic skills into clinical practice is highly important. OBJECTIVE Therefore, we developed and evaluated a blended learning course in a multicenter cluster randomized trial. METHODS...

Background Clinical diagnoses determine if and how therapists treat their patients. As misdiagnoses can have severe adverse effects, disseminating evidence-based diagnostic skills into clinical practice is highly important. Objective This study aimed to develop and evaluate a blended learning course in a multicenter cluster randomized controlled t...

Future-oriented cognition plays a manifold role for adults’ mental health. The present study aimed to investigate the relationship between future-oriented cognition and mental health in N = 191 children aged between 3 and 7 years. Parents completed an online-questionnaire including children’s future-oriented cognition (e.g., episodic foresight; Chi...

Background: Although earlier studies concluded that clinicians’ prototypes of patients with mental disorders can influence diagnostic decisions, it remains unclear how presumably more or less prototypical features were identified in these studies. Therefore, the aim of the current study was to empirically identify therapists’ prototypes of major d...

According to the bio-informational theory of emotion by Lang, mental imagery of fearful stimuli activates physiological and behavioural response systems, even in the absence of sensory input. We investigated whether instructed mental imagery of pain-associated (not painful) interoceptive sensations entails a threat value and elicits increased start...

Picture book reading is an enjoyable everyday activity for many young children with well-known benefits for language development. The present study investigated whether picture book reading can support young children’s social-emotional development by providing a learning opportunity for the usage of emotion regulation strategies. Three-year-old chi...

Objective: Clinical diagnoses determine if and how therapists treat their patients. As misdiagnoses can have severe adverse effects, disseminating evidence-based diagnostic skills into clinical practice is highly important. Therefore, we developed and evaluated a blended learning course in a multicenter cluster randomized trial. Method: Undergrad...

This descriptive study examined patient characteristics, treatment characteristics, and short-term outcomes among patients with Anorexia Nervosa (AN) and Bulimia Nervosa (BN) in routine clinical care. Results for patients receiving full-time treatment were contrasted with results for patients receiving ambulatory treatment. Data of a clinical trial...

b> Hintergrund: In aktuellen deutschsprachigen Leitlinien zur Behandlung von Menschen mit Schizophrenie wird für kognitive Verhaltenstherapie (KVT) die höchste Evidenzstufe angegeben. Jedoch weist vergangene Forschung darauf hin, dass nur ein geringer Teil eine entsprechende Behandlung erhält. Methode: Um Zugangsbarrieren für Menschen mit psychotis...

b> Hintergrund: Ziel der vorliegenden Studie war die Überprüfung der Interrater-Reliabilität, Validität und Akzeptanz des DIPS Open Access 1.2 (DIPS-OA1.2) in einer Gelegenheitsstichprobe aus der Allgemeinbevölkerung. Methode: Sieben DIPS-zertifizierte Psychologinnen (B.Sc.) führten 144 Interviews durch. Anschließend wurden die durch die Interviewe...

Rationale: The administration of glucocorticoids (GC) as an adjunct to exposure represents a promising strategy to improve one-session exposure outcome in anxiety disorders. It remains to be determined whether similar effects can be induced with the use of acute stress. Furthermore, the possible modulation of exposure effects by hormonal factors (...

Avoidance-based emotion regulation plays a central role in the development and maintenance of anxiety disorders across the life span. However, measures for children that account for different avoidance strategies, are scarce. Derived from Gross’ Process Model of Emotion Regulation, the Bochum Assessment of Avoidance-based Emotion Regulation for Chi...

Das Mini-DIPS Open Access Arabisch ist ein diagnostisches Kurzinterview bei psychischen Störungen und eine Übersetzung des Mini-DIPS Open Access (2. Auflage). Es bietet als Kurzfassung des DIPS Open Access eine schnelle und dennoch zuverlässige diagnostische Beurteilung psychischer Störungen nach DSM-5 und ICD-10. Das Mini-DIPS Open Access Arabisc...

Individual responses to behavioral treatment of anxiety disorders vary considerably, which requires a better understanding of underlying processes. In this study, we examined the violation and change of threat beliefs during exposure. From 8,484 standardized exposure records of 605 patients with different anxiety disorders, learning indicators were...

Background Body-related attentional biases are assumed to contribute to the development and maintenance of body-related concerns or specific mental disorders such as eating disorders. However, while studies have indicated gender-specific differences in body-related concerns, less is known about gender-specific differences in body-related attention...

Individual responses to behavioral treatment of anxiety disorders vary considerably, calling for better understanding of underlying processes. This study examined the violation and change of threat beliefs during exposure. From 8484 standardized exposure records of 605 patients with different anxiety disorders, learning indicators were derived: Exp...

The number of studies on fear conditioning in children and adolescents has increased in recent years. Most of these studies exclusively focus on data of completers while dropout rates, reasons for dropout, and specific characteristics of non-completers are underreported. This study systematically investigated data of 283 children and adolescents be...

Viele Kinder und Jugendliche in Deutschland besuchen trotz Schulpflicht nicht regelmäßig die Schule. Manche von ihnen fehlen nur einzelne Schulstunden, andere hingegen bleiben ganze Tage, Monate oder bis hin zu einigen Jahren der Schule fern. Der Beitrag zeigt, wann Angststörungen Ursache für Schulabsentismus sein können, und wie dies therapeutisch...

rsFC fMRI Seed-based analysis of distinct pattern of anxiety diagnoses.

Eine Leitlinie soll Fachpersonen, Betroffenen und der gesamten Bevölkerung evidenzbasierte Empfehlungen auf Basis des aktuellen wissenschaftlichen Erkenntnisstands zu Diagnostik- und Behandlungsmöglichkeiten geben. Der 3. Entwurf zur Nationalen Versorgungsleitlinie (NVL) Depression wird aktuell zur Diskussion gestellt. Gerade die Diskussionsvorlage...

Here, we tested the feasibility of a new paradigm developed to investigate the mechanisms of exposure-therapy. The protocol was previously developed for the use with adults and optimized to closely model the mechanisms underlying exposure, i.e. extinction learning. We adapted this paradigm for the use with children, and tested its feasibility in ch...

Previous research provides evidence of maternally transmitted body-related attentional biases in female adolescents. In contrast, it remains unclear whether a familial transmission of body-related attentional biases also exists within father-son dyads. Therefore, the current study examined n = 42 male adolescents and their fathers with respect to d...

Metacognitive beliefs have repeatedly proven to play a role in anxiety disorders in children and adolescents, but few studies have investigated whether they change after cognitive behavioral therapy. This longitudinal intervention study explores whether positive and negative metacognitive beliefs in particular change after exposure-focused treatmen...

Infektionsschutz und psychische Gesundheit für Kinder und Jugendliche müssen in der Pandemie nicht konträr, sondern gemeinsam gedacht und optimal gefördert werden! Hohe Pandemiedynamik macht psychosozialen Stress, je länger psychosozialer Stress andauert, desto mehr macht er psychisch und körperlich krank.

Exposure is a highly effective treatment for anxiety disorders in children and a key ingredient in many empirically supported therapies. Exposure aims to provide the child with new experiences in anxiety-provoking situations, and is usually used as a complement to other CBT interventions. Its effectiveness and high acceptance by patients strongly s...

The administration of glucocorticoids (GC) as an adjunct to exposure might represent a promising strategy to improve exposure therapy outcome in anxiety disorders (AD). The beneficial effects, however, might be sex-dependent and/or further modulated by hormonal factors (e.g., contraceptive usage in women). In the present study, we investigated whet...

Researcher teams around the globe including the “Project Lightspeed” are intensively working on vaccines to fight the Covid-19 pandemic. However, the availability of effective vaccines does not guarantee the vaccination willingness among the population. In spring 2021, we investigated the vaccination willingness and its potential predictors in repr...

In treating childhood anxiety disorders, therapists use highly individualized anxiety hierarchies to assess anxiety-eliciting situations and to personalize treatment. In contrast, psychometric assessment of anxiety symptoms in children usually consists of standardized questionnaires, assessing either total anxiety or disorder-specific symptom score...

Little is known about toddlers’ acquisition of specific emotion regulation (ER) strategies, and how early ER is shaped by temperament. This study investigated if 24-month-old German toddlers, predominantly from families with high levels of parental education (N = 96, n = 49 male), learned the ER strategy distraction through observational learning,...

Contrary to the well-documented link between parental and offspring clinical anxiety, little is known about the relationship between parental everyday-life anxieties (e.g., concerning family, finances, health) and offspring anxieties. To close this gap, we assessed the frequency of parental symptoms of DSM-IV anxiety disorders and everyday-life anx...

The COVID-19 pandemic is one of the most serious health and economic crises of the 21st century. From a psychological point of view, the COVID-19 pandemic and its consequences can be conceptualized as a multidimensional and potentially toxic stressor for mental health in the general population. This selective literature review provides an overview...

The present study examines the relationship between obesity and mental health using longitudinal data. Participants with data at baseline and one-year follow-up were included from two countries: Germany (364) and China (9007). A series of structural equation models with three mediators and one moderator were conducted separately for female and male...

Introduction An increase of suicidal thinking within the COVID-19 pandemic has been postulated. Yet, direct comparisons with pre-COVID-19 rates are missing. Methods The present study investigated whether levels and rates of suicidal ideation have changed between 2016 and 2020. Data of N=664 university students (five cohorts: 2016: n=105, 2017: n=1...

Background: The need to optimize exposure treatments for anxiety disorders may be addressed by temporally intensified exposure sessions. Effects on symptom reduction and public health benefits should be examined across different anxiety disorders with comorbid conditions. Methods: This multicenter randomized controlled trial compared two variant...

This study examined the consequences of media exposure to thin ideals compared to pictures of landscapes in healthy young women and women with eating and mixed mental disorders and investigated whether appearance-related cognitive factors and cognitive distortions moderate the effects. Two hundred seventy-five women in a multisite laboratory trial...

The present study examines the relationship between smoking and panic, depression, and anxiety over time and across two cultures, using data from the BOOM studies, . The relationship between smoking and anxiety disorders, including panic requires further exploration, in order to reconcile inconsistent, contradictory findings and cross-cultural diff...

In the absence of vaccines or causal therapies, behavioral measures such as wearing face masks and maintaining social distance are central to fighting Covid-19. Yet, their benefits are often questioned by the population and the level of adherence to the measures is variable. We examined in representative samples across eight countries (N = 7,568) w...

Die Klinische Psychologie ist essentieller Bestandteil interdisziplinärer Forschung im Bereich psychischer Störungen. Ziel der präsentierten Analyse war es, den individuellen Beitrag der Psychologie abzubilden. Wir bestimmten daher objektive Indikatoren für die Mitwirkung der deutschsprachigen Klinischen Psychologie und ihrer psychologischen Nachba...

This cross-national study investigated the extent of social media use (SMU) as a source of information about COVID-19, and its relationship with the experienced burden caused by the pandemic. Representative data from eight countries (France, Germany, Poland, Russia, Spain, Sweden, the UK, the USA) were collected online (end of May to the beginning...

Introduction: Adherence to Covid-19 safety measures reduces the spread of the pathogen and lowers mortality rates. The present study examines microlevel (including sociodemographics, health risk factors, and mental health) and perceived macrolevel variables (including freedom, justice, and wealth) concerning self-perceived and self-reported Covid-1...

In ambiguous situations, infants have the tendency to gather information from a social interaction partner to regulate their behavior [social referencing (SR)]. There are two main competing theories concerning SR’s function. According to social-cognitive information-seeking accounts, infants look at social interaction partners to gain information a...