Intervention
A psychological intervention is a planned attempt to modify human behavior, cognitions, and affects in line with a previously set goal based on rationality and scientific findings as well as psychological and practical knowledge. This goal may be attained by promoting individual competencies, compensating individual deficits, and changing relevant conditions in the social environment.
The term intervention is used to cover a host of different measures that can be sorted into the categories promotion, prevention, therapy (treatment), or rehabilitation. The department specializes in research on early interventions for children at risk; the promotion of tolerance and prevention of prejudice; the prevention of aggression, violence, delinquency, and crime; and the psychotherapeutic treatment of children and adolescents. We are also working on theoretical and conceptional foundations of intervention measures in general, problems with their implementation in psychosocial care systems, and their efficacy and effectiveness (see also Evaluation, Research Synthesis).