Modeling the malleable mental health trajectory - a commentary on Oldehinkel and Ormel (2023).

In their Annual Research Review titled 'Stability of psychopathology: Lessons learned from longitudinal population surveys' (Oldehinkel & Ormel, Journal of Child Psychology and Psychiatry, 2022) argue that psychological and psychiatric researchers should not only compare groups but also focus on the within-person variability using repeated measurements in longitudinal studies to advance our understanding of emotional and behavioral problems. I argue adopting such within-person approaches might also change how we think about causality and might lead us to more successful intervention research.