University Hospital of Old Age Psychiatry and Psychotherapy

Zentralgebäude der UPD

Research consistently highlights that older adults require specialized treatment tailored to their needs. The University Hospital of Old Age Psychiatry and Psychotherapy stands out as the only institution in German-speaking Switzerland to offer a full professorship exclusively dedicated to old-age psychiatry and psychotherapy.

To the Hospital’s website

Director

Prof. Stefan Klöppel

Profile

  • Teaching of students studying medicine, pharmacy, psychology, or artificial intelligence in medicine as well as PhD students at the Graduate School for Health Sciences.
  • Currently, there are seven research groups within the institute.
  • These groups investigate cognitive functions with behavioral assessment, brain imaging, and non-invasive brain stimulation in healthy adults and in patients with a neurodegenerative or a psychiatric disorder. In addition, we develop non-pharmacological interventions to slow down cognitive decline.

External Partners

Institute of Psychology, University of Bern, Switzerland; Department of Neuroradiology, University of Zurich, Switzerland; SleepLoop Consortium, University of Zurich/ETH Zurich/University of Ulm; Department of Basic Psychological Research and Research Methods, University of Vienna, Austria; Neuroscience Centre, University of Geneva, Switzerland; Department of Psychiatry, University of Oslo, Norway; Max-Planck Institute of Psychiatry, Munich, Germany; Technical University, Munich, Germany; University of Eastern Finland, Kuopio, Finland; Department of Psychiatry, Monash University, Victoria, Australia; Department of Psychiatry, University of Sao Paulo Medical School, Sao Paulo, Brazil; Lyon Neuroscience Research Centre, Lyon, France

Grants

  • Swiss National Science Foundation (189240, 2152569, 215333, 218252)
  • Synapsis Foundation
  • Empiris Foundation
  • Bangerter-Rhyner Foundation
  • SISF (Sitem Insel Support Funds)
  • Age Foundation
  • Gesundheitsförderung Schweiz

Highlights 2025

The DeKoMo logo with the cantons and different settings in which the project is being implemented.

First article on dementia competency and monitoring (www.DeKoMo.ch) released

DeKoMo is an implementation project led by the University Hospital of Old Age Psychiatry and Psychotherapy. Funded with a total budget of CHF 2.3 million, DeKoMo seeks to enhance intersectoral dementia care by systematically reducing complications across disease trajectories and by decreasing hospitalizations among people living with dementia. In September 2025, the project published its first article in the Schweizer Zeitschrift für Psychiatrie & Neurologie, presenting the conceptual framework of DeKoMo, its innovative elements, and highlighting the first research project conducted within the initiative.

To the website of Rosenfluh Publikationen

From left to right: Dawid Strzelczyk (Winner), Nathalie Giroud (Representative for winner Vanessa Frei), Esther Brill (Winner), Marlies Heerdegen (Managing Director of the Vontobel Foundation), François Höpflinger (Member of the Jury), Anna Caterina Binda (Musical accompaniment), Christina Röcke (Scientific Managing Director of the Center for Gerontology and Co-Director of the UZH Healthy Longevity Center, University of Zurich)

Dr. Esther Brill received the Vontobel Prize for Research on Ageing 2025

Postdoc Dr. Esther Brill was awarded the prestigious Vontobel Prize for Research on Ageing 2025 by the University of Zurich’s Centre for Gerontology. The award recognizes outstanding scientific contributions that advance knowledge in ageing research and support the transfer of evidence-based findings into clinical practice. Dr. Brill received the prize for her publication “Behavioural and neuronal substrates of serious game-based computerised cognitive training in cognitive decline: randomized controlled trial”, published in the British Journal of Psychology (BJOP). Her work demonstrates the clinical potential of digital serious games in supporting cognitive health in individuals with cognitive decline.

Brill et al., BJPsych Open. 2024

Award Ceremony of the Vontobel Award 2025

To the Website of the Vontobel Stiftung

Receiver operating characteristic (ROC) curve for all models, calculated with data from three different assessments.

Practice effects derived from semantic verbal fluency tests can help classify Mild Cognitive Impairment (MCI)

A one-minute semantic verbal fluency test, when repeated three times, can reliably distinguish individuals with MCI from healthy older adults. Patients with MCI show markedly smaller practice effects, and these repeated-measure changes were very informative for machine-learning-based classification. Repeating a simple 1-minute verbal fluency task three times therefore provides enough information to identify MCI.

Dörr et al., Alzheimers Dement (Amst). 2025