Dr L. de Haan has been named Professor of Psychotic Disorders at the University of Amsterdam’s (UvA) Faculty of Medicine (AMC-UvA).

Lieuwe de Haan’s research focuses on clinically relevant variation among patients with recent onset psychotic disorder. Little is currently known about such variation and its specific treatment. De Haan’s particular line of study is the variation in subjective responses to treatment with antipsychotic drugs, variation in co-morbid obsessions and compulsions, variation in cannabis use and variation in social functioning. These studies should result in an improved understanding of the evolution and variation of psychopathologies as well as, ultimately, better treatments.

De Haan has worked as a psychiatrist with the Zorglijn Vroege Psychose (‘early psychosis department’) at the AMC’s Psychiatry Department since 1993. He is on the steering committee of the Genetic Risk and Outcome of Psychosis (GROUP) project, which is a joint partnership set up by four university medical centres and local mental healthcare institutions in order to study vulnerability and resilience in psychotic conditions. He is also a member of the steering committee for a recently launched international EU-funded study on Gene-Environment interactions in Schizophrenia. De Haan previously served as chair of the Dutch Psychiatric Association’s (Nederlandse Vereniging voor Psychiatrie) committee on scientific activities for five years. He currently is a member of the editorial board of the journal Tijdschrift voor Psychiatrie, and has authored and co-authored various publications, including in The Archives of General Psychiatry, The American Journal of Psychiatry, Plos One and Nature.

In the interests of disseminating knowledge beyond the bounds of science, the Zorglijn Vroege Psychose has developed film clips profiling its research studies, which can be viewed via the link below.