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Project

Digital pathways in attachment research

During this PhD project, we want to investigate the digital implementation of an attachment-focused intervention. More and more children and adolescents are facing mental health problems. The current pandemic has increased this number even more. It is known that a good parent-child attachment bond buffers the development of mental health issues. There is already a promising therapeutic intervention (Attachment-Based Family Therapy, ABFT) that restores or strengthens the attachment relationship between a parent and their child. However, the problems of families attending this therapy are already so severe. In addition, we have also noticed that ABFT is time-consuming and not always easily accessible. Therefore, we want to develop an approachable Attachment-based blended care (@BC) online tool for families in which ruptures threaten to occur but where things have not yet escalated. In this self-help guide, we want to strengthen the parent-child attachment relationship to protect them from collapsing under distress and increase their resilience to reduce the risk of mental health problems in the child. Throughout the online program, parents will be able to make an appeal to the support of a primary caregiver. Another goal of this PhD project is to gain more insight into the role of oxytocin in attachment development. Until recently it was thought that oxytocin only played a positive role in this but this assumption no longer seems valid. In fact, it seems that oxytocin may have a blocking effect in trust learning. We want to develop a Virtual Reality experiment to get a better view on the function of oxytocin in trust learning in children aged 9 - 13 years.

Date:1 Mar 2022 →  Today
Keywords:Attachment, Blended care
Disciplines:Family studies, Parenting support
Project type:PhD project