The full title of the project is “PrevenD: Cognitive Control Training for the Prevention of Recurring Depression. PrevenD stands for “Prevent Depression” and is an Applied Biomedical research project with a social approach (TBM project). It receives financial support from the Fund for Scientific Research (FWO) in Flanders.

This project is a collaboration between Ghent University and Ghent University Hospital. The UGent department involved is the Experimental Clinical and Health Psychology department (more specifically PANlab). The UZGent department is the department Head and Skin within the Faculty of Medicine and Health Sciences.

Depression is a common disorder that affects many people. It is estimated that about 23% of Belgians will have to deal with this during their lifetime. This is accompanied by a large personal cost (including psychological suffering, reduced social contact, increased risk of suicide), as well as a social cost (for example, the reimbursement of medication and treatment costs, but also sick leave).

Although standard treatments usually work quite well, depression is characterized by a high recurrence rate (about 50%). That is precisely the approach of PrevenD: to reduce the risk of relapse in previously depressed people.

Previously depressed people regularly still suffer from residual complaints, even though they have recovered. These residual complaints can be problems with attention and memory, which then falls under the heading of “cognitive control”. Problems with cognitive control is not only a hallmark of (and after) depression, it is also a risk factor for relapse, which is currently not addressed by standard treatments. Cognitive control is trained via our computer training, and those attention and memory problems are tackled, so that residual complaints are reduced and the risk of relapse too.