Jim van Os

Who is Jim van Os?

Jim van Os is a Dutch psychiatrist and epidemiologist.

He studied medicine in Amsterdam, psychiatry in Jakarta, Casablanca, Bordeaux and London, and subsequently epidemiology at the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine. He is professor of Psychiatric Epidemiology at the Department of Psychiatry and Psychology at Maastricht University Medical Centre, and visiting professor at the Division of Psychological Medicine, Institute of Psychiatry, DeCrespigny Park, London, United Kingdom.

In 2009, van Os proposed abolishing the diagnosis of schizophrenia due to lack of validity, and introduced a new syndromal definition, "salience syndrome", citing previous work by other researchers that explains psychosis as aberrant salience regulation.