Timon Elmer

the full survey report and a policy statement can be found here:
actionuni.ch/news-and-act...

Short term: No cuts to education funding, as proposed by the federal council.
Medium term: More low-threshold, professional support services for mental health and for those with poor supervision.
Long term: Flatter hierarchies that limit power abuse and more permanent positions after the PhD.

Ausgebrannt und depressiv: psychische Probleme bei Forschenden Laut einer neuen Erhebung haben viele Forschende depressive Symptome. Noch mehr fühlen sich regelmässig ausgebrannt.

I was interviewed by Swiss public radio (SRF) about our new survey on #mentalhealth in #academia. We (@actionuni.bsky.social) surveyed over 2,500 researchers across Switzerland. Around 1 in 4 report depressive symptoms or feeling burned out.

What should change? see 🧵

Read the SRF report 👇

With Markus Wolf, @eveliensnippe.bsky.social & Urte Scholz 🙏
Published in @jmirpub.bsky.social
Funded by @snsf.ch

Using #qualitative methods, we found key barriers to intervention engagement: time constraints ⏳ and unavailable support providers 🤷—important challenges for future #digitalhealth interventions, #JITAIs, and #EMIs.

We also showed that our just-in-time adaptive intervention #JITAI, designed to help people with depressive symptoms activate their social support networks, was feasible and moderately acceptable in daily life.

🤔 Should #digital #interventions really be delivered when people feel most distressed?

No! In our study, we found that triggering based on self-reported need was rated as more helpful and timely than triggering based on emotion dynamics!

👉 Paper out in #JMIR Mental Health: doi.org/10.2196/74103

Heading home from #ehps2025 — health psychology at its best in my second academic home, Groningen 🇳🇱! It was great to meet old friends and get to know new people and their work! I presented our study on when to ideally deliver digital health interventions in daily life 👉 mental.jmir.org/2025/1/e74103

thanks @dejonckheeregon.bsky.social ! 🙌

Yes, indeed! Our preprint is out! 🙌

We compared different #JITAI triggering strategies and found that those based on self-reported support need were rated better than those based on #emotion (dynamics)!

More on this and the feasibility of our social support JITAI 👇
osf.io/preprints/ps...

List of Stand Up for Science events—official events in red, solidarity events in blue.

SO MANY STAND UP FOR SCIENCE EVENTS TO CHOOSE FROM—153 and COUNTING!

To get more information on our local events and to register your own, head to www.standupforscience2025.org/local-event-information/ ☀️⬇️🌎

🚨 URGENT: Swiss research and education faces unprecedented budget threats. Today, actionuni and 12 mid-level academic staff associations across Switzerland released a joint statement opposing the drastic federal budget cuts threatening our institutions. 1/7

@mariestadel.bsky.social 🙏👋

➡️ Main Takeaway: Most people may not experience negative effects from smartphone or social media use, but those already vulnerable to loneliness are at greater risk ❗

🔗 psycnet.apa.org/doiLanding?d...
🔗 osf.io/preprints/ps...

\w Aurelio Fernández,@mariestadel.bsky.social,Martien Kas,Anna Langener

📱 Individuals who generally experience higher loneliness are more negatively affected by their smartphone use—specifically, social media engagement.

#Loneliness #WellBeing #SocialMedia #SmartphoneUse #MentalHealth

🔍 Key Finding: While smartphone use showed no significant association with affect indicators and only a weak bidirectional link with loneliness, the effect varied based on individual loneliness levels.

Does smartphone use make people feel lonelier? Or does loneliness predict smartphone use?

We combined experience sampling data with smartphone usage data to examine the bidirectional association between well-being and smartphone use over time.

Published in @apajournals.bsky.social Emotion!
🧵 👇

Hi everyone! We are starting up a new bsky account for actionuni, the organisation representing mid-level academic staff in Switzerland. Follow us for our updates!

I’m excited to share that @psypost.bsky.social featured our recent study on the timing of emotional, cognitive, and behavioral improvements during treatment for depression.
Co-authored with:
@mahelmich.bsky.social
@timonelmer.bsky.social
@arnoutcsmit.bsky.social
Wolfgang Lutz & Eva Ceulemans

A PhD position AND a postdoc position in Statistics and Data Science with the great Mirka Henninger in Basel! 🤩https://psychologie.unibas.ch/en/fakultaet/abteilungen/statistics-and-data-science/

same here! ☺️🙏

👋🙏☺️

The Swiss StudentLife Study: Investigating the emergence of an undergraduate community through dynamic, multidimensional social network data The Swiss StudentLife Study (SSL Study) is a longitudinal social network data collection conducted in three undergraduate student cohorts (N1 = 226, N…

...
we also collected data in a second (larger) experiment that we never analyzed. For details, hit me up (yes, I'm only sitting two floors down) and/or see point 3.6.2 here:
www.sciencedirect.com/science/arti...

Social Network Dynamics of Students YouTube video by Social Networks Lab

nice study 🙌! we also did a similar experiment a while ago too -- but not looking at personality change, but rather differences in friendship network evolution:
www.youtube.com/watch?v=Pfdw...
www.nature.com/articles/s41...
...

👋 🙏