Dr Helen Koechlin

Dr Koechlin, Department of Psychosomatics and Psychiatry, University Children’s Hospital Zurich, University of Zurich, Switzerland; Division of Child and Adolescent Health Psychology, Department of Psychology, University of Zurich, Switzerland; Children’s Research Center, University Children’s Hospital Zurich, University of Zurich, Switzerland

Dr Helen Koechlin, PhD, is currently a research group leader specializing in pediatric chronic pain at the University Children’s Hospital in Zurich, Switzerland, funded by the Swiss National Science Foundation. She received her PhD in psychology from the University of Basel in 2018, focusing on the importance of emotional functioning in childhood and adolescence across physical and mental health domains.

Dr Koechlin was affiliated with the Department of Anesthesiology, Critical Care, and Pain Medicine at Boston Children’s Hospital, Harvard Medical School from 2015-2023, where she also conducted most of her PhD-related research. Her research concentrates on chronic pain in children and adolescents, with a special focus on the role of emotion-related factors, such as emotion regulation, emotional variability, and emotion differentiation.

Dr Koechlin’s studies have underlined the importance of these factors in the context of chronic pain. Dr. Koechlin’s research is collaborative and emphasizes the inclusion of children and adolescents with chronic pain and their parents in the whole research process.

Dr Koechlin is currently conducting a multicenter longitudinal observational study that focuses on children and adolescents with a scheduled orthopedic surgery. The major aim of this study is the identification of risk and resilience factors that influence pain and emotion-related trajectories after surgery in order to find suitable targets and timepoints for the prevention of pain chronification.

Intervention research builds another focus of Dr Koechlin’s work: By means of (network)meta-analyses, she examines the safety and efficacy of existing interventions for different chronic primary pain syndromes across age groups.
Helen Koechlin completed a Certificate of Advanced Studies in Child and Adolescent Psychology. Her research has received competitive funding, and has been published in high-impact journals.