The new year has had a good start with extremely beautiful winter weather. The negative side of this is that it is unbelievable cold in our hospital. I really need gloves to be able to write in my office. Fortunately I now have a suitable pair! They leave to fingertips uncovered so that browsing papers…
The night before Christmas Eve, I have just completed my responsibilities as an assistant of Santa Claus. I recently saw a video clip claiming the Santa Claus now travels with Finnair, and the reindeers are busy learning new professions. But I am convinced that they will arrive across the skies as always, with magic, not…
October has been an academically inspiring month! After the Nordic meeting on transgender health, which I mentioned in my last post, I soon attended a most interesting public discussion on the academic dissertation of licentiate of psychology Petra Waris. https://helda.helsinki.fi/handle/10138/156583 Petra Waris had studied comorbidity between schizophrenia and pervasive developmental disorders in adolescence. My Department…
I am just back from the first Nordic meeting on transgender health, held in Oslo. Amazing that such meeting did not take place earlier. At certain time when I was doing research on involuntary treatment I participated a lot in Nordic meetings on psychiatric epidemiology and health services research. More recently, focusing clinically and in…
I am looking forward to the fall term, particularly to the seminar program of my specialist trainees. This autumn we shall be discussing adolescent development. Understanding adolescent development, comprising its physical, cognitive, emotional, social and cultural aspects, is the cornerstone of adolescent psychiatry, and the very reason why adolescents need their own mental health services…
I am just back from the congress of the European Society for Child and Adolescent Psychiatry in Madrid (http://www.escap2015.com/). What a refreshing experience. I had great company of two colleagues from Helsinki. Madrid is a great city with lots of interesting attractions, the weather was perfect (particularly after the very cold summer we have in…
What a great month behind: two of my PhD students published their academic dissertations. The dissertations of Juha Väänänen and Monica Gammelgård were publicly examined in the 17th of April and the 9th of May, respectively. Juha’s research focused on social phobia and depression in adolescent population. Using the Adolescent Mental Health Cohort Study data…
As one attempt to balance between all increasing request for health services and all worsening economic situation, prioritization is increasingly discussed. Our hospital’s treatment ethics committee also organized a seminar on prioritization in health care. I was kind of amazed that the topic of discussion was totally built around high tech and very advanced, even…
Our hospital provides an opportunity to try activity bracelets, in hope of encouraging the employers to find a healthier lifestyle. I have dance classes most days a week and on one of the remaining two days I usually go Nordic walking. So basically I should know that I get exercise. But I was very excited…
The beginning of my year has been dominated by academic activities. My schedule has included a lot of teaching, data analyzing, scientific writing and managing research program related issues such as subjecting new projects for evaluation by ethics committee and negotiating funding. The first article of one of my PhD students has just been published,…