Personal information
As an experienced general practitioner and associate professor of general practice at the Department of General Practice and the EMGO+-Institute for Health and Care Research of VU University medical centre (VUmc), Harm van Marwijk (51) also teaches at the VUmc department of vocational training for general practice.
Research topics
His focus in research, practice and teaching is on improving primary mental health care from a dialogue-centred, and integrated perspective. See projects and publications.
Short biography
After graduating in medicine at Leiden University in 1985, he did residency training in geriatric psychiatry in The Hague, psychiatric centre Bloemendaal in 1986, where he also started doing clinical research on late-life depression. To pursue his academic interest in late life depression as seen in general practice, he obtained a research grant from the Netherlands Organization for Scientific Research (NWO) for a PhD project (1990-95). After an EU fellowship at the Department of Primary Care in Southampton, UK, in 1996, he moved to VUmc in Amsterdam, where he has worked since.
He collaborates closely with the Department of Psychiatry of VUmc, the Department of Clinical Psychology of VU University, the Netherlands Institute of Mental Health and Addiction (Trimbos Instituut) and the Netherlands Institute for Health Services Research (NIVEL). He is involved with the design and execution of several large-scale studies such as the Netherlands Study of Depression and Anxiety (www.nesda.nl), an eight-year study on depression and anxiety in various health care settings, and the Nederlandse Studie naar Depressie bij Ouderen (www.nesdo.nl). He is a board member of both studies. He has advised ten PhD students, and is advising a further ten. He has co-authored more than 150 international and national research papers, has obtained several million euros in research support, and is involved in most national guideline committees on mental health.