News

Psychiatric co-morbidity and substance abuse after gastric bypass surgery

New article by John and Christian, among others, published in British Journal of Surgery.

The first long-term prospective cohort study from Sweden that examines the occurrence of major psychiatric co-morbidities among adult gastric bypass patients compared to non-operated patients with obesity and matched population controls. The study shows that gastric bypass surgery is associated with substantially increased risk of alcohol-related disorders and moderately increased risk of other types of substance abuse, particularly in men.

Link to the article.

News

Grant money to Maria

Congratulations to PTSD research, Maria has received a 2.4 million SEK CIMED project grant! 🎉

Maria’s study evaluates intensive treatment for post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD), an exposure-based treatment that is given for five days instead of the regular treatment time of three to five months. Preliminary research shows intensive trauma focused treatment to be as effective as when the treatment is delivered by weekly sessions, but with the advantage that the recovery rate is faster and the proportion of patients who drop out decreases.

Read more about the project here.

News

First article on Braining

The first article on Braining is out! By Rücklab group members Åsa, Lina and colleagues.

The study has analyzed data from all participants in the Braining project at Psykiatri Sydväst and compared it with regular patients at the clinic as well as records for a smaller cohort of participants. The study describes the characteristics of the participants in the project and concludes that the Braining intervention reached a wide age range and patients with a wide and representative diagnostic panorama. This suggests that Braining could be a promising and safe method for implementing physical activity in a psychiatric patient population

Link to the article here. 🧠🏋️💪

What is Braining?

Braining – physical activity as additional treatment in psychiatry – is an initiative by Psykiatri Sydväst. The intervention consists of group sessions of physical activity where patients and staff train together at the psychiatric clinic. The aim is to reduce symptoms of depression and anxiety and improve the quality of life and physical health of patients. The hope is that Braining will reduce stress among the staff and contribute to an improved work environment.

News

Diana on Epstein’s podcast

In Louise Epstein and Ola Hermanson’s podcast “I hjärnan på Louise Epstein”, Diana is interviewed about obsessive-compulsive disorder (OCD).

She talks about what we know about what happens in the brain of patients with OCD, about diagnostics and the psychological treatment: exposure with ritual prevention. The treatment involves finding the obsessions and refraining from doing what feels right in the moment but in the long run upholds the problems. Author Amanda Romare also participates in the podcast and talks about her own experiences with OCD and CBT treatment.

Diana also talks about her research on Deep brain stimulation for patients with severe OCD who have not responded to various forms of psychotherapy and/or medication.

Episode (in Swedish) here.

News

Come work at Rücklab!

We are looking for a postdoc in precision psychiatry for Christian Rück’s research group and John Wallert’s team.

The role includes work within three very relevant research projects: 1) The Compulsory mental care project, 2) The saving lives project and 3) a project that aims to identify predictors of short-term and long-term outcomes after CBT treatment.

Read more and submit your application here.

We look forward to receiving your application!

News

Long Long Chen’s dissertation

Last Friday, Long Long Chen successfully defended his thesis Obsessive-Compulsive Disorder – Novel Insights on Executive Functions, Gut Microbiome, and genetics.

Long Long is a specialist in psychiatry, senior specialist at the OCD program at Psykiatri Sydväst, as well as research colleague in the Rück group.

The thesis underlines the fact that Obsessive-Compulsive disorder (OCD) is complex and that it is difficult to identify biological markers as an explanatory model. However, genetic research towards patients with severe and treatment-resistant OCD is promising.

Congratulations, Long Long! 🎺🎺🎺

News

Christian in Idébyrån

In a recent episode of SVT’s Idébyrån, Christian participates on the theme “Why do you feel like shit?”. The subject perhaps raises more questions than answers.

Are most people unhappy or happy today? Or something in between? Is a happiness project or adventure project needed, or is it enough to eat hot dogs at a football game and be satisfied?

Joining the studio are Victoria Larm, author, Bengt Brülde, professor of practical philosophy and presenter Anna Lindman.

News

Leoni’s ISP seminar

New PhD students are thriving at Rücklab right now! Today Leoni had her individual study plan (ISP) seminar, presenting her upcoming doctoral studies.

Leoni’s doctoral project goes under the title “Predictive modeling of suicide risk and risk factors using registry and genetic data” and is all about suicide prediction using new technologies and unique multimodal data.

A challenge in the current research field of suicide prevention is that it is hard to study such rare events. To date, the focus has been on suicidal thoughts or attempts rather than actual deaths, and there are reasons to believe that these events differ in terms of prediction. When it comes to compulsory care, we know little about how the current interventions does in the long run, and there is a need for improved suicide prediction tools that can be implemented in a clinical context. 

Leoni will work with the projects 1) Suicide and compulsory mental care and 2) Saving Lives.

  • The first project will be about risk factors for suicide among psychiatric patients under compulsory mental care and will describe and compare suicide risk for these patients, as well as identify risk factors.
  • The second project will be about improving suicide prediction in a total nationwide multimodal suicide cohort. This project aims at discovering genetic and environmental risk factors and also develop predictive models for suicide death.

Leoni’s main supervisor is John Wallert. Co-supervisors are Christian Rück and Ronnie Pingel.

News

Olly’s ISP seminar

Today, Olly held her individual study plan (ISP) seminar for her doctoral studies. The overall purpose of the studies is to enhance the prediction of health and socioeconomic outcomes in patients with common psychiatric disorders, such as depression and anxiety.

We know that 25-50% of patients with depression and anxiety disorders don’t respond to CBT. These patients may benefit from alternative or tailored treatment formats. We want to explore ways to help them, but in order to do that we need to predict who they are. Existing predictive models of treatment outcome are usually based on clinical data with a small set of predictors which results in low predictive power and limited clinical utility.

Olly’s PhD project will use a big sample from Psykiatri Sydväst’s Internet Psychiatry and predict treatment outcomes for multiple disorders. It will use clinical, genetic and register data to predict both treatment response and long-term socioeconomic disadvantage such as labour market marginalization.

The work consists of four studies.

  • Study 1: Clinical, socioeconomic and genetic predictors of treatment outcomes in internet-delivered cognitive behavioral therapy for depression and anxiety disorders
  • Study 2: Development of a machine learning model to predict response to ICBT treatment at the individual subject level
  • Study 3: Development of a machine learning model aimed at predicting labour market marginalization
  • Study 4: Validation of the model from study 2 in clinical practice

Olly’s main supervisor is Christian, and her co-supervisor is John.

We look forward to this!