The Department of Psychology (project leader: Stefan Lüttke) and the Department of Child and Adolescent Psychiatry, Psychosomatics and Psychotherapy were the first to investigate the social-cognitive abilities of adolescents with depression within the SAD study. We hypothesize that parental factors (e.g. mental illness), childhood trauma and genetic factors lead to adverse parent-child interactions (e.g. insecure attachment), which promote a "maldevelopment" of social-cognitive skills. The altered social-cognitive abilities in turn facilitate the development of depressive disorders in adolescence. The study examined 11-17 year old depressed and healthy adolescents of all school types. State-of-the-art methods were used to assess emotion processing and perspective taking, as well as saliva samples to analyze genes related to both depression and social-cognitive abilities.
Social Cognition in depressed adolescents - the SAD Youth Study
Project team
Project team
Department of Psychology, Faculty of Science, University of Tübingen
Department of Child and Adolescent Psychiatry, Psychosomatics and Psychotherapy, University Hospital of Psychiatry and Psychotherapy, Tübingen
Prof. Dr. Annette Conzelmann, Prof. Dr. Tobias Renner.
Certificates and Associations
Focus: Top National Hospital 2025
Stern: Germany's Outstanding Employers in Nursing 24/25
Quality partnership with the PKV
Family as a success factor
Pension provision for the public sector
