This year, the LOEWE Research Center DYNAMIC was represented at the Philipps-University of Marburg's summer festival, giving interested visitors the opportunity to learn about the centre's research.

At the heart of our work is the dynamic network approach to mental disorders, which aims to inspire innovations in their treatment. To bring this complex topic to life, we used an interactive boule game: several balls represented the symptoms of a mental disorder, connected to one another by rubber bands. When an intervention ball was thrown into the network, the resulting movement patterns of the entire disorder system varied depending on where it landed. This allowed visitors to experience directly that changes at one point can have effects throughout the entire network – much like the way mental health symptoms and protective factors mutually influence one another, giving rise to different dynamics.

This interactive demonstration sparked many engaging conversations and curious questions. We greatly enjoyed exchanging ideas with our visitors and would like to warmly thank everyone who stopped by our stand.