Mental Public Health
In the last decade, mental health has become one of the biggest challenges in public health. Children and adolescents in particular more often report feeling sad and less satisfied with life. The number of psychiatric diagnoses and the use of medicine are also increasing.
The mental health has considerable importance the individual child’s learning and development, and on a long-term basis, it may have considerable impact on developing the child’s potential and contribution to society as an adult. We know very little about the complex causes and even less about which initiatives could be effective in different contexts. At the same time, there is a need to shed light on the challenges and possibilities in the technological development within the field of mental health.
In the research unit, we work across research disciplines and together with professionals to develop new knowledge in interaction with citizens. We strive to contribute to a constructive ecosystem connecting research with practice through different collaboration projects as well as communication and teaching activities.
Methods
We work with so-called life course quantitative epidemiological methods based on the unique data infrastructure of data in registries, cohorts and questionnaires in the Nordic countries. For the last decade, we have worked on developing new types of dialogical designs based on the possibilities offered by the technology to collaborate with professionals and citizens.
Our primary focus is the interaction with children and citizens and the development of ecosystems, aiming at developing the interaction between knowledge for practice through new communication formats. We collaborate with strong research environments, nationally and internationally, on the development of next generation public health research.
