Introducing fellow Elske Salemink

Elske Salemink is full Professor in Clinical Psychology (Cognitive and Emotional Processes) at Utrecht University. Her research aims to improve the understanding of the development, maintenance, and treatment of psychopathology, with an emphasis on anxiety, depression, and obsessive compulsive disorders in (emerging) adults. Elske focuses on underlying causal mechanisms related to cognitive and emotional processes, such as interpretation biases, attentional biases, implicit associations, and memory biases; how these processes drive problems and impact upon treatment success. Current projects focus on the dynamic interplay of symptoms and underlying mechanisms in daily life to improve the understanding of (math) anxiety and its treatment (ESM measures, dynamic transition models).

From the lab to the clinic

Elske's research varies from rigorous, fundamental, lab-based studies often with an experimental manipulation, to more applied research including randomized controlled trials and implementation projects in collaboration with various mental health institutes. She aims to build bridges between science and practice in various ways, e.g. in her role as the Editor-in-Chief of the Dutch scientific journal Behaviour Therapy and Cognitive Therapy. She also completed the training to become a registered cognitive behavior therapist (member of the Association of Behavioral and Cognitive Therapy, VGCt) and is currently affiliated with Altrecht Academic Anxiety Center to shape clinical-relevant research.

Elske is involved in the project ‘Developing network-based personalized guided e-health interventions in a student population with comorbid mental health problems: Caring Universities’.