Rücklab – Psychiatry research at Karolinska Institutet

Today our PhD’s Martin Turesson and Leoni Grossmann together with research assistant Erik Melin participated in AI-dagen at Karolinska Institutet, presenting two projects on AI and suicide prevention after involuntary psychiatric care. One presentation highlighted findings from our nationwide study on suicide after involuntary care, now published in The Lancet Regional Health – Europe

We also presented our work on a new AI-based risk calculator to support discharge decisions after involuntary psychiatric care—using nationwide data to provide transparent, individual risk estimates for key adverse outcomes.

In the past week, we’ve seen two separate contributions from the members of the Rück Research Group in Swedish media. Katja Ivanova was among the authors of a Svenska Dagbladet debate article on the integration of research findings in Swedish schools, which you can find here.

Yesterday, Christian Rück’s piece on how we talk about trauma in our everyday interactions was published in Dagens Nyheter. Read it here!

We’re proud to highlight the important work on PTSD carried out by Maria Bragesjö. A couple of weeks ago she welcomed the Swedish Armed Forces for a talk focusing on PTSD. During their visit Maria explained what the PTSD diagnosis involves and how it can develop after traumatic events. She described common symptoms such as intrusive memories, physical reactions, and a persistent sense of threat. She also discussed the types of thoughts that often arise, for example, thoughts about danger or worries that something bad might happen again, and how these can influence daily life and overall functioning. Maria provided a brief overview of what happens in the brain during PTSD, describing how the alarm system becomes overactive and keeps the body responding as if the danger were still present.

Moreover, she emphasized that PTSD is treatable, and many people benefit from evidence-based therapies. Support is often available in primary care, and in some cases individuals may be referred to specialized psychiatric services.

Link to video with Maria Bragesjö and the Swedish Armed Forces

This week we found out that our application for funding to establish a new research center was approved. The Centre for Applied Psychiatric Research and Innovation (CAPRI) will be focusing on severe psychiatric conditions in high-intensity care settings, with the aim of furthering knowledge and creating better treatments for the most vulnerable patients. Main applicant for the centre is Christian Rück, who led the team to submit the application being granted 48 million sek by Forte. Congratulations, and thank you Forte! 🎉

We are happy to announce that yet another article is coming out of the Rück Research Group! This time we have Christian Rück and John Wallert as co-authors for a paper titled “Genome-wide association analyses identify distinct genetic architectures for early-onset and late-onset depression” published in nature genetics. The article investigates how genetic architectures can be leveraged to improve treatment design for different expressions of depression. Congratulations Christian and John! 🎉

The article can be found here.

We are happy to welcome our new research assistants, Erik Melin and Penny Taka, to the team!

Erik has a background in economics and a Magister Degree (Civilekonomexamen) from Linnéuniversitetet in Växjö. He is currently studying at KI, the third term of the Study Programme in Psychology. He will be assisting team members and leaders in John Wallert’s team with different tasks relating to their various research projects.

Penny is in her third year of the five-year study Programme in Psychology at the Karolinska Institute and holds a BSc in Business and Economics from the Stockholm School of Economics. She has previous work experience from healthcare and business settings, and is now looking forward to supporting ongoing research projects as a research assistant!

A warm welcome to them both! 👏

More exciting research is coming out of the Rück Research Group! 🥳 Led by Leoni Grossman, PhD student with the group, the study Suicide after involuntary psychiatric care: a nationwide cohort study in Sweden investigates suicide risk indicators among different subgroups of patients receiving involuntary psychiatric care. You can read it in full in The Lancet Regional Health here!

The Rück Research Group had a new article come out in BMJ Mental Health this week! The study, titled Patterns of sex-specific and age-specific risk indicators of suicide: a population-nested case-control study and led by Fredrik Johansson, investigated risk indicators of suicide and how they relate to actual suicide numbers among groups with certain demographic characteristics. Read it here: https://mentalhealth.bmj.com/content/28/1/e301959

Last week, members of the Rück Research Group visited collaborators in Oxford. The purpose of the trip was to further existing partnerships with our British colleagues within a range of different projects—an endeavour that proved highly successful! 🏫

On Friday, our very own Julia Bäckman defended her dissertation, and of course passed with flying colors! Her thesis, titled Bridging Genes and Therapy: Insights into CBT Outcomes for OCD, anxiety and depression, explores when CBT is and is not effective with the aim of ensuring that as many individuals as possible can receive the treatment that fits them best. It can be found here.

Among the many spectators were the majority of Julia’s supervisors, Christian Rück (main supervisor), John Wallert, and David Mataix-Cols, as well as the examination board, consisting of Sandra Tamm and Ida Karlsson from the Karolinska Institute and Filip Arnberg from Uppsala University. Acting as the opponent was Evangelos Vassos from King’s College.

Congratulations, Julia, on a successful dissertation defence! We are incredibly proud of you and can’t wait to follow your continued journey! 🥳👏