Category: News

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! 🥳👏

Last week, Julia nailed her dissertation Bridging Genes and Therapy: Insights into CBT Outcomes for OCD, anxiety and depression. We look forward to her disputation on September 12th and wish her good luck! 👏

We are happy to introduce another exciting addition to the team! 🎉

Danny Majid is an MD and PhD student at Karolinska Institutet, currently completing his residency in psychiatry at Psykiatri Sydväst. His research focuses on emotion processing and regulation in individuals with intellectual disability (ID). The project uses eye-tracking and explores whether pain and generalized joint hypermobility are associated with behavioural dysregulation in ID. He will also evaluate whether dialectical behaviour therapy (DBT) can improve emotional regulation in this population. His main supervisor is Long-Long Chen.

We are excited to have Danny on board!

In addition to Hanna and Martin, we would like to welcome Filip Jonsson to the group!

Filip is a PhD student with a background in medical ethics research. He also works as a junior physician, holding an MD from Karolinska Institutet. 

Filip’s research concerns ethical and legal questions regarding suicide risk assessments, with Docent Manne Sjöstrand as main supervisor.

We’re excited to have him on board! 🥳

We have more exciting news on the team front! Going forward, the Rück research group will be joined by Martin Turesson.

Martin is a PhD student with a background in clinical medicine, psychiatric research, and academic teaching. He holds an MD from Linköping University and currently works as a junior doctor in psychiatry.

Martin is a member of the Statistical Modelling team, with John Wallert as his main supervisor. He leads a systematic review on the outcomes of involuntary psychiatric care and is involved in the development of a clinical risk calculator for adverse outcomes following discharge from involuntary psychiatric care.

We look forward to having him and want to wish him good luck with his upcoming studies! 🎉

We are excited to welcome Hanna Weyler to the group!

Hanna is an industrial PhD student employed by Save the Children Sweden. She is a licensed Psychologist and Specialist in psychological treatment/psychotherapy mainly working in the field of trauma related mental health issues in children and adolescents. She is a certified international trainer in Trauma Focused Cognitive Behavioral Therapy for children (TF CBT) and has prior clinical experience from Child and Adolescent Psychiatry and Social Services. 

Hanna will be working with main supervisor Maria Bragesjö in the iTF CBT project (Efficacy and cost effectiveness of Internet-delivered trauma focused CBT for children with PTSD).

We are happy to have her on board and wish her a warm welcome! 🥳

At the end of the spring semester, psychology students Victoria Ruud and Hanna Rolfsdotter defended their Master’s thesis—a project on therapists’ experience with intense Prolonged Exposure therapy as a treatment method for PTSD—carried out under the supervision of Maria Bragesjö and Sim Jamil. We recently asked them to share insights from their work and were excited to learn more about their topic as well as their methodology.  

Their findings cover fascinating insights into the efficiency of this kind of therapy, as characterized by fast results and higher levels of motivation among patients as well as therapists. However, for such positive effects to be reaped it is also of utmost importance that patients have a say in the choice of their treatment, that both patients and therapists believe in the method, and that therapists have a supportive team to share the burden of such intense trauma treatment with. What’s interesting is that these effects seem rather intertwined. As Hanna describes it:  

“The pros and cons stem from the same origin: the intensity is rewarding due to the fast results, but it’s also the intensity that can end up being overwhelming or feel like a burden as the therapists have insight into many cases of trauma treatments simultaneously due to group sessions, guidance meetings, and daily check-ins with their team. It’s gratifying because you learn a lot about the diagnosis and the treatment, but it can also be burdensome since you find yourself in so many traumatic stories at the same time.” 

As for their research approach, the two students used reflexive thematic analysis in order to investigate this matter. Such methodology requires a high level of thematic reasoning so as to avoid simple topic summaries, as well as extensive consideration and acknowledgement of the subjective qualities and approaches of the researchers when going into a project like this—something that differs from previously established notions of perceived objectivity in qualitative and quantitative research alike. Victoria talked about the importance of recognizing the subjective influence of the researcher, what form it takes, and how it interacts with the material at hand:  

“We kept shared logbooks as well as separate reflexive diaries in order to give ourselves the space to reflect on the experiences we had and the work we did throughout this project. We discussed a lot with each other, and weren’t scared to challenge ideas and conclusions. We come from different backgrounds, have different personalities, and different strengths and opportunities for improvement. All of this was important to keep in mind and to remember when we carried out the analysis.”  

As such, Hanna and Victoria have mapped highly important aspects to take into consideration when designing and implementing effective treatments for PTSD, while simultaneously demonstrating a great example of the reflexive thematic analysis approach. We congratulate them on work well done, and look forward to following them in the future! 🎉