Internalizing disorders such as major depression and anxiety disorders are highly prevalent, and have a large impact on mental health world-wide. In addition, there is a high rate of comorbidity between internalizing and some prevalent somatic disorders, such as cardiovascular disorders, cancer, autoimmune disorders, or respiratory disorders.
Lifelines' design offers important opportunities to investigate the etiology and course of internalizing disorders, including physical-mental comorbidity. This project aims to describe the methods and instruments that have been used within the Lifelines study, and will provide an overview of the prevalence of internalizing disorders, psychiatric and somatic comorbidity, and important genetic, environmental and lifestyle risk factors. The researchers will write an informative paper for other researchers about Lifelines' design and methods to assess internalizing disorders.