Wikke van der Putten

PhD student Dr. Leo Kannerhuis

After finishing the Research Master of Psychology and the master of Clinical Developmental Psychology, both at the University of Amsterdam in 2018, I started working as a research assistant for the “Autism & Aging” project of d’Arc and as a psychologist at the Dr. Leo Kannerhuis. I joind d’Arc as a PhD-student in October 2019, under supervision of prof. dr. Hilde Geurts and dr. Audrey Mol. My PhD-project is a cooperation between d’Arc and the Dr. Leo Kannerhuis, which is a specialized mental health clinic for autistic children, adolescents and adults.

During my PhD-project, I focus mainly on the role of camouflaging behavior in the development of mental health difficulties in autistic adults. I will investigate how camouflaging can be measured in a valid and reliable manner, which will result in a self-report questionnaire that can be used in scientific research and clinical practice. Furthermore, I aim to disentangle for whom camouflaging may be related to mental health difficulties and whether camouflaging behavior is specific for autistic adults. In these studies, I will also focus on sex differences in camouflaging behavior. After gaining more knowledge about the construct of camouflaging behavior, I aim to investigate the role of camouflaging behavior in the diagnostics process and during interventions.