In Maastricht, she studied health sciences, both biological health and exercise sciences (1993-1997), and medicine (2000-2005). Afterwards, she trained as a psychiatrist (2007-2011) and works as an elderly psychiatrist and trainer of elderly psychiatry (2017-2024) at Mondriaan. As a psychiatrist, she is attached to the neuropsychiatry outpatient clinic and from there she often works transmurally, including in regional nursing homes and as a consultant at the Centre for Consultation and Expertise (CCE). Nationally, she is a figurehead in the field of traumatic stress in people with dementia. To improve the prognosis for older people with post-traumatic stress (PTSD), she initiated and leads the global collaboration on traumatic stress in older people, the 'ON TRAumatiC stress and aging: a global networK (ON TRACK) within the 'Global Collaboration on Traumatic Stress (GCTS).
Since 2022, she has been a board member of the department of geriatric psychiatry of the Dutch Society for Psychiatry (NVvP) and launched 'the week of geriatric psychiatry' in 2023. She has also been a member of the national science council Dementia and Very Serious Problem Behaviour (DZEP) since 2023.
PhD research
Sjacko Sobczak received her PhD from Maastricht University in 2002 on the topic of biological vulnerability of first-degree relatives of people with manic-depressive disorder. In doing so, she mainly researched the Serotonin system. She used experimental models to study the effects of serotonin on cognition, mood and stress in humans. The thesis 'Serotonin and bipolar disorders; serotonergic vulnerability in first-degree relatives of patients with bipolar disorders' can be viewed here.
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