Psychiatric disorders including depressive and anxiety disorders are very common and posit the largest contributor to chronic diseases in Europe. Despite this massive disease burden, current treatment strategies only treat the symptoms and often cause debilitating side effects. This urges the need for research into their causes to come up with new concepts of disease prevention and better treatment strategies. Recent evidence suggests a developmental origin of these disorders. Stress by early adverse life events including birth-related complications predispose an individual to develop mental disorders. Studies in animal models have found that these risk factors affect the serotonin system, whose dysfunction is implicated in mental illness. My research aims at elucidating if the function of the serotonergic system is permanently altered by early-life stress, which may contribute to the increased susceptibility to psychiatric disorders later in life.

2017

2023