Interview with Professor Niels Bilenberg about diagnostic trends and systemic pressures

Interview with addiction psychiatrist Darius Jokūbonis.

Among the Nordic countries Iceland has the highest use of ADHD medication while waiting lists for diagnosis and treatment are getting longer. The minister of Health therefore appointed a committee in December 2023 to write a green paper on the situation by meeting relevant stakeholders, going through data and the literature. The objective was to identify 5-10 key findings to guide authorities regarding next possible steps.

How much evidence is enough to justify a treatment? The question sits at the fault line between science, ethics, and practice. Researchers seek methodological certainty; clinicians face patients whose needs seldom wait for consensus. Regulators demand proof before approval, while professional societies call for coherence before endorsement. Each perspective is valid, yet none alone determines when knowledge becomes action.

This article is based on a short lecture originally given in the Swedish Psychiatric Associations yearly meeting in Stockholm in March 2024. I have since given a similar lecture on other occasions. The article below is a summary of the main points of the lecture. My intention with the lecture was to bring into awareness and discuss some current international research important for understanding ADHD, research that is not often discussed in Sweden. Because of space limitations

The Swedish Psychiatric Association launched the Swedish Knowledge Test for residents and specialists in adult psychiatry in spring 2024. In 2025, we introduced a new annual version. Meanwhile, in February 2025, the EPA and UEMS launched the EPA Board Examination. How do these tests differ? And how do they compare to the Royal College of Psychiatrists’ exams in the United Kingdom?

The Nordic Journal of Psychiatry, formerly “Nordisk Psykiatrisk Tidsskrift”, is an international journal that publishes excellent (...)

I communicate, therefore I am... From our first day to our last, we relate to others. This communication - just as vital as water and food - largely takes place without words. Exchange with others forms the foundation of our existence and creates space for all of life’s possibilities. Yet it is precisely in this exchange that we so often lose our way, which becomes the basis for many misunderstandings, often with significant consequences.

Interview with Armando Baez, specialist in psychiatry.

Interview with Gintautas Narmontas, MD

Interview with Artiom Charkavliuk.

Globalization, with a growing number of migrant patients calls for better cross-cultural competence among health care workers. Hospitals and outpatient clinics have become multicultural and ethnic diversity among the staff is at present the norm. In Norway psychiatry is the medical discipline with the highest proportion of practicing International Medical Graduates (IMGs).

When Khmer Rouge’s terror regime in Cambodia was ended in 1979 there were no mental health psychiatrists in the country, and no mental health services. The Norwegian Council for Mental Health initiated an educational program for psychiatrists in Cambodia, which was managed by the University of Oslo in collaboration with the International Organization for Migration and the Cambodian Ministry of Health. Norwegian psychiatrists participated for six years in the training of the d

Interview with Professor Berit Berg by Anne Kristine Bergem.

Interview with dr. Jón Guðnason, Professor of Engineering at Reykjavik University, specializing in speech signal processing and language technology.

In 2016, Nobel Prize-winning physicist John J. Hopfield from Princeton University stated that radiologists would soon become obsolete due to advancements in artificial intelligence (AI). “I was personally offended,” says Helga Brøgger, a specialist in radiology. “I thought, ‘That’s not happening without a fight,’ and I decided to learn about technology from a medical perspective.”

For psychiatrists, working with autistic individuals presents considerable clinical and ethical challenges - especially when mental illness and somatic conditions intertwine. Many of us have encountered patients whose symptoms defy traditional categorization. The phrase “lost in translation” resonates deeply in such cases - not only across languages, but between body and mind, behavior and intention, professional and patient. This essay explores the consequences of missed sig

Mental health professionals can remedy the devastating communication patterns that tend to arise in the development and the aftermath of severe mental illness, by involving the family in the treatment and supporting them in their role as informal caregivers. In this essay I shed light on why and how the physician’s role as “interpreter between the patients and the relatives” can contribute decisively to improving communication and interaction among the family members.

Communicating research effectively to the general population requires simplifying complex ideas without oversimplifying the meaning. In psychiatry, probably the most complex field in medicine, this is a challenge. Another aspect that might make communicating research in psychiatry problematic is that everyone has their own opinion on diagnosis and treatment and that the psychiatrist themselves are not always agreeing on how to understand and apply research findings. Below I w

As psychiatrists, our words matter – they are our scalpel. As they have more potential to create harm than even the sharpest blade, we must use them wisely, and precisely. In this text, the definition of mental health is debated in classical Greek fashion to sharpen the blade. When Diogenes the Cynic enters the debate, chaos emerges – and an important lesson is learned.