New theoretical developments have radically changed how we understand psychopathology: as dynamic network in which people’s problems, their environments, and society at large interact. This “complex systems” framework of psychopathology holds great promise for clinicians and clients, but few attempts have been made to translate this theoretical model into practical, interactive applications. This theme aims to develop user-friendly interfaces that allow both clinicians and clients to interact with this novel theoretical framework of psychopathology. By working in close collaboration with end-users in primary and specialty care, the RPA thereby supports a better understanding of their condition along the lines of complex systems theory. 

This theme tackles two central challenges: 

1. Innovative monitoring: Recent years have seen a fast expansion of systematic tracking of mood states, environments, and symptoms through ambulatory assessment devices, where for instance short questionnaires are administered every few hours or movement and physiological data are recorded. This theme explores ways to connect such data to complex systems approaches and to potentially meaningful clinical diagnostic and treatment matching applications. 

2. Qualitative data analysis: The analysis of qualitative data, such as interviews, diaries, transcripts, audio and video recordings, is open to many new possibilities using natural language processing and AI. This offers possibilities for developing new interfaces that relate the client’s qualitative stories to causal loop diagrams, network structures, dynamic profiles or other complex systems representations of psychopathology.