Erlend Hem

20.06.2019: Our interest in this story arose in relation to the article on the psychiatrist Augusta Rasmussen (1895–1979) (1). While working on that article, we constantly came across the name of Ragnhild Vogt Hauge, a person unknown to us. We became curious about who she was. Her story helps elucidate...

30.10.2018: In 1923, the five-year-old Public Health Association published a folder with ten large-format posters, called House Maxims for Mothers and Children (Figure 1). Their objective was to promote child health through inculcation of a healthy way of life. The folder included an appeal from the...

26.06.2018: In 1934, senior registrar Augusta Rasmussen (1895–1979) published a study of 77 cases involving sexual offences. She found that the women involved had suffered no mental injury from the abuse. In 1947, she published a study of the intelligence level of 310 Norwegian women who had formed...

08.01.2018: The term crisis is used in many senses in medicine. Ever since Antiquity it has been used to describe a decisive turning point in an illness, in particular with regard to infections. During the 1970s, a new usage of this term emerged. Now, it related to crises in a psychological sense. We can...

13.11.2017: “Chronically suicidal” and “chronic suicidality” are unclear terms which in our opinion should not be used. Both these terms are relatively new. The late psychiatrist Professor Nils Retterstøl offered the following definition in his book Selvmord ( Suicide) from 1995: “The ‘chronically suicidal’ are...

13.11.2017: Some mental health professionals maintain that it is not possible to predict suicide and that suicide risk assessments can be harmful. We do not agree with those assertions. In 2008, national guidelines for suicide prevention in mental health care were published in Norway (1). A milestone in suicide...

08.09.2015: It is easy to agree that we should avoid terms that may appear «highly stigmatising and discriminatory». But should we follow the example set by our American colleagues and replace «obese» by «obesity», or write «persons with morbid obesity» instead of «morbidly obese persons»? We asked The Language...

24.02.2015: Doctors have an elevated suicide rate, but it is most likely moving in the right direction Recently in New York City, two first-year residents jumped to their deaths within a few days of each other. These suicides aroused horror, drawing renewed attention to suicides among doctors (1, 2). Suicides...