Paul Emmelkamp
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Paul Emmelkamp has contributed to a number of areas in clinical psychology, psychopathology and psychiatry. He has been appointed as professor in clinical psychology and psychotherapy at the University of Groningen and at the University of Amsterdam and has been appointed as Academy Professor by the Royal Netherlands Academy of Science. He was elected as President of the International Federation for Psychotherapy in 2014 and is Editor in Chief of Clinical Psychology & Psychotherapy. He has written and edited a number of books on research into a variety of clinical subjects including anxiety disorders, addiction and personality disorders.
In September 2021, he joined the Paris IAS as part of the French Institutes for Advanced Study fellowship program - FIAS - co-funded by the European Union’s Horizon 2020 research and innovation programme under the Marie Skłodowska-Curie grant agreement No 945408. His fellowship also benefits from the support of the RFIEA+ LABEX, with a national funding (Grant ANR-11-LABX-0027-01).
Research interests
Anxiety disorders, Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder, Psychotherapy, Cross-cultural factors
Cross-cultural factors, psychotherapy and post-traumatic stress in refugees
Nearly one out of three refugees suffer from post-traumatic stress disorder and many of these individuals also have co-morbid mental disorders including depression and anxiety disorders, substance abuse disorder and personality disorder. Given the high prevalence of post-traumatic stress and other mental disorders including suicide ideation and suicide attempts in refugees, there is a clear need of investigating effective treatments for the mental health of this population. A number of therapies (e.g. trauma-focused cognitive behavioural therapy and eye movement desensitisation and reprocessing therapy) are effective for reducing clinician-rated post-traumatic stress disorder in Western countries, but whether these treatments are equally effective in people from other cultures has hardly been investigated.
This research project at the Paris IAS consists of in-depth systematic research of studies into cross-cultural factors with respect to psychopathology (e.g. post-traumatic stress disorders, anxiety and depressive disorders, personality disorders, substance use disorders) and psychotherapy including studies into culture-sensitive measures to assess these disorders. Further, studies into psychotherapy in non-western populations and in refugees are critically reviewed.
Key publications
Emmelkamp Paul, Kamphuis JH., Personality Disorders, Psychology Press, 2007, 260 p.
Emmelkamp Paul, Ehring T. (Eds), The Wiley Handbook of Anxiety Disorders, Wiley-Blackwell, 2014, 1440 p.
Latest publication
Emmelkamp Paul, Meyerbröker K., “Virtual Reality Therapy in Mental Health”, in Annual Review of Clinical Psychology, vol 17, 2021, p. 495-519. https://doi.org/10.1146/annurev-clinpsy-081219-115923
