Academic interests
Children and young people's health is my special field. My focus is especially on opportunities to enhance coping and take care of good health during and after severe stress.
My main interests lie in general within the areas of general practice and community medicine, with a special focus on prevention, early diagnosis and early treatment, and on grounding clinical practice in research-based knowledge.
My research covers:
- GPs’ services to young people
- The importance of life adversities and health behaviour in 15-year-olds as predictors of dropout in school and marginalisation from the labour market
- Cooperation in health care (Shared care) based in primary health care and mental health disorders (including multimorbidity)
- The relationship between health and coping with challenges and difficult situations
- Treatment of anxiety, depression and pain in children and adolescents with cognitive therapy
- Disease understanding and self-understanding when medical symptoms are unexplained, based on the adolescent experiences with unexplained seizures (PNES)
- GPs’ services for young people with mental retardation
- Follow-up after self-inflicted poisoning (suicide)
- Prevention and treatment of eating disorders
- Validation of psychometric instruments to detect young people with depression in primary care (ethnicity included)
- The impact of school environment on health
- Bodily ailments in children and adolescents with a parent with cancer
- GPs' attitude and experience with preventative health
In the research is used both quantitative and qualitative methods.
Some young people have difficulties coping with serious challenges, and experience mental health problems as a result of this. Cognitive therapy is evidence based and appears particularly suited in this age group. Cognitive therapy in particular, and psychiatry in general practice in general, therefore hold a place in my work.
Teaching - Medical student program
- Community medicine. What is “normal”? Youth health, normality and coping
- Adolescent medicine
- Child and adolescent psychiatry in general practice
- Healthcare communication
- Cognitive behavioral therapy
- Academic coordination of teaching in the GPs’ offices
- Examiner at the final degree exam
Teaching - Post graduate education
- Young people in general medicine
- Effect of poverty in childhood and adolescence on health in adult life
- Cognitive behavioral therapy
- Healthcare communication
- When the consultation is about existential questions
- General Medicine and Public Health issues
Background
I am based in primary care, continuously working in clinic. At the same time, I have had different tasks as head of a medical center and later Director of Health Services and public Health, first in the local Council of Fet and later in a city ward of Romsås in Oslo.
I also have experiences as a board member of a hospital board, executive board member of a diaconal institution, and as a representative in local and central positions in the Norwegian Medical Association.
Partners Cooperation projects
- Family Health teams: Shared Care for Mental and co-morbid illness by well coordinated primary and mental health care. A collaboration between Akershus University R & D department of mental health, Inland Hospital, McMaster University, Department of Psychiatry & Behavioral Neuroscience, Hamilton, Canada and Department of General Practice, University of Oslo. Two (three) PhD-students. 2016 -
- Social Health Boots. The aim of the research project is to develop knowledge to provide better and more effective information for young people (age 16-26 years) on mental health through smart use of online chatbots. Chatbots are digital assistants based on automated dialog systems that interact with people through natural language. The latest developments in artificial intelligence and deep learning make chatbots a promising complement to more costly and time-consuming measures in health and welfare services. The Social Health Bots project is a collaboration between Sintef, Oslo University Hospital, University of Agder and the University of Oslo. Post doc / PhD-student. 2017 -
- Psychogenic Non-Epileptic Seizures (PNES). PhD project titled A troublesome diagnosis! Perceptions of illness and self in adolescents and adults with PNES. PNES is perceived in the project as an example phenomenon to also explain medical unexplained symptoms (MUS). The project is a collaboration between the Norwegian Center for Epilepsy, University of Tromsø and University of Oslo. Finished 2017.
- Depression in the elderly. The use of a structured collaboration model between GPs and geriatric psychiatrists. PhD research fellow at the Department of General Practice, UiO. 2019 -.
- The project Marginalization at work is a collaboration with The Clinic for Mental Health and Addiction at Oslo University, The Centre for Child and Adolescent Mental Health (RBUP), East and South and the Norwegian Centre for Violence and Traumatic Stress Studies (NKVTS). This project has several international partners, including agreement about supervision with Dr. Dean Kilpatrick of the Medical University of South Carolina and the National Crime Victims Research and Treatment Center in the United States. PhD finished 2015.
- Self-poisoning: Studies of aftercare, attitudes, satisfaction and intervention. The project has paid particular attention to the role of the GP in the prevention and follow-up of suicides. The project is a collaboration between Oslo University Hospital and the University of Oslo. PhD finished 2015.
- DaNoVa (Danish Norwegian Validation study) project is a collaboration with the Research Unit of General Practice at University of Aarhus, Denmark. In this partnership, we also have contact with key people in the project Guidelines for Adolescent Depression in Primary Care (GLAD-PC) based at the Department of Psychiatry, Columbia University, New York, USA. Completed 2016 with five publications.
- A new Nordic network on research in children and adolescents in general practice was established in Copenhagen, 7 October 2011. Together with researchers from University of Copenhagen and University of Bergen, I attended this Founding meeting, representing University of Oslo. The network has later held meetings in Bergen 24-25 May 2012, in Oslo 8-10 November 2012, in Copenhagen 3-4 June 2013, in Tampere 22 September 2013, in Bergen, 15-16 May 2014, Oslo 12-14 February 2015, Copenhagen 29-30 January 2016, Inverness, Skotland, 8-9 September 2016, Bergen / Voss 9-11 March 2017, Reykjavik 14-17 June 2017, Oslo 8-10 March 2018 and dinner Aalborg 16 June 2019. Researchers from Stockholm, Aarhus, Odense, Aalborg, Tampere, Helsinki and Inverness/Aberdeen have joined the network. Through the Network, partnerships in a number of research projects has been established. You can read more about the network here.
- Several other projects in which I participate are collaborative projects between institutions in Norway.