Module "Affective Disorders"
Michael Colla, MD
Golo Kronenberg, MD
Malek Bajbouj, MD
Patients with affective or anxiety disorders are diagnosed and treated by an interdisciplinary team of psychiatrists, psychologists, nurses, social workers, ergo- and physiotherapists. At present, two inpatient wards (32 beds) and day-care and outpatients’ clinics are available. For depressed inpatients, we have implemented an individualized treatment program including pharmacotherapy, cognitive behavioural group therapy, individual psychotherapeutic interventions, psychoeducational courses, group activities, ergotherapy, sports and physiotherapy as well as a variety of ancillary treatment options e.g. meditation and relaxation techniques.
Our research activities focus on unipolar and bipolar depression (Ion Anghelescu) as well as brain stimulation techniques (Malek Bajbouj) and attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (Michael Colla). Our unit is cooperating with a large number of national and international research groups as well as with pharmaceutical and biomedical companies. Selected current research topics are primarily addressing clinically relevant problems such as:
- Pharmacogenetic factors of response to psychotropic drug treatment: several decades after the discovery of antidepressant and antipsychotic drugs, the precise mechanism of action of these treatment options are still not well understood. In particular, the clinically relevant problem to predict whether an individual patient will benefit from a given treatment or not, is not yet solved. In our current projects, we focus on the clinical utility of clinically easy-to-measure markers (such as individual improvement during treatment) as a potential predictor of subsequent treatment outcome. Moreover, we try to determine pharmacogenetic parameters influencing individual treatment response and/ or treatment tolerability and are working together with other national and international grroups to establish reliable endophenotyps that will better predict individual treatment outcome.
- Development and evaluation of new psychopharmacological treatment options: although today several pharmacological treatment options exist for affective disorders, they have limited efficacy and tolerability. Therefore, the clinical necessity to develop more effective treatments with good tolerability is still of major relevance. In a number of national and international projects the research group focusses on the investigation of efficacy and tolerability of different augmentation strategies.
- Development and evaluation of antidepressant brain stimulation techniques: this research focuses on the optimization of existing antidepressant interventions (like electroconvulsive therapy) and the development and investigation of newer techniques like repetitive transcranial magnetic stimulation, vagus nerve stimulation, deep brain stimulation and magnetic seizure therapy. To understand the underlying mechanisms a broad variety of techniques like functional and structural imaging, neurophysiological and neurochemical approaches are chosen. In clinical studies the efficacy of different maintainance strategies are investigated.
- The Neurofunctional Basis of Emotion - Cognition Coupling in Health and Depression: This multicentre project (funded by the BMBF; speaker: Isabella Heuser; in collaboration with ZI Mannheim and the University of Bonn) combines concepts and models of both Social Cognitive Neuroscience and Clinical Psychiatry and employs recently developed neuroscientific paradigms to study a well-established example of emotion-cognition coupling: the affective bias in depression.The term “bias” in this context implies a tendency to process information according to certain types of emotional valence. This biased information processing is essential for emotional vulnerability and represents within a clinical context the common basis of emotional pathology
- Neurobiology and treatment of ADHD: This research group has two main research focusses: first, the investigation of basic neurobiological mechanisms in ADHD using neuroimaging and neuropsychological approaches and second, improvement of therapeutic interventions. The reseach group is member of the German ADHD competence network.
for questions regarding ADHD research: Michael Colla
for questions regarding brain stimulation: Malek Bajbouj
