Sonja Rutten works as a psychiatrist and senior researcher at the Psychiatry department of Amsterdam UMC since 2018, and she is a member of the Medical Ethics committee.

In her clinical work, she specialises in functional neurological disorders, persistent physical symptoms and neuropsychiatric disorders.
She finished a postdoctoral Master in Epidemiology in 2016 at EpidM. In 2019, she obtained her PhD at the VU Amsterdam. Sonja’s thesis focused on depressive, anxiety and sleep disorders in patients with Parkinson’s disease, as well as the effects of Bright Light Therapy in these patients.

Together with prof. Odile van den Heuvel she wrote the book “Parkinson bij de psychiater: verhalen over liefde, rouw en veerkracht”, a collection of true stories about people with Parkinson’s disease who experience psychiatric symptoms.

Her current research focuses mainly on functional neurological disorders (FND) and somatic symptom disorders (SSD).
Sonja Rutten was chair of the revision of the Dutch Care Standard for FND and vice-chair of the Dutch Multidisciplinary Guideline for SSD and related disorders.