Ageing populations with increased needs, rising costs of traditional services, and new technologies are some factors driving the use of e-health services. A Norwegian study with data from 2015-2016 found that 13.5% had used apps, 7.3% had used social media, and 5% had used video services for health purposes. Little is known about the effects of many online health services, but in general they seem to increase knowledge and make most people feel reassured, although some users feel more anxious or confused after using such tools. Recent technological developments have resulted in new online health services, including AI-based technologies. More updated knowledge regarding the population’s use of e-health services in general and e-mental health services in particular, is needed.

The objective here is to provide information about an upcoming large population-based epidemiological study and how it addresses e-health and e-mental health.

We introduce the upcoming 8th version of the epidemiological Tromsø Study and discuss its importance to the field of e-mental health.

The Tromsø epidemiological study has since 1974 taken place in the Norwegian municipality of Tromsø. It contains information on a range of topics within health and illness, including topics from many medical specialities, psychiatry and substance use. In the upcoming 8th version of the study (2025-2026), more than 33,000 people aged above 40 will be invited to participate. The main questionnaire will include questions relating to a wide variety of topics, including on e-health use. We suspect the importance of e-health and e-mental health have increased lately, and we will examine how the use of e-health may impact mental health.

Community-based studies, such as the Tromsø Study, allow researchers to study associations between many different variables, including mental health and e-health. The upcoming Tromsø 8 study will enable us to study e-health use and its relationship to mental health in a large sample representative of the Norwegian population.

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People with schizophrenia on average are more socially isolated, lonelier, have more social cognitive impairment, and are less socially motivated than healthy individuals. People with bipolar disorder also have social isolation, though typically less than that seen in schizophrenia. We aimed to disentangle whether the social cognitive and social motivation impairments observed in schizophrenia are a specific feature of the clinical condition v. social isolation generally.

We compared four groups (clinically stable patients with schizophrenia or bipolar disorder, individuals drawn from the community with self-described social isolation, and a socially connected community control group) on loneliness, social cognition, and approach and avoidance social motivation.

Individuals with schizophrenia (n = 72) showed intermediate levels of social isolation, loneliness, and social approach motivation between the isolated (n = 96) and connected control (n = 55) groups. However, they showed significant deficits in social cognition compared to both community groups. Individuals with bipolar disorder (n = 48) were intermediate between isolated and control groups for loneliness and social approach. They did not show deficits on social cognition tasks. Both clinical groups had higher social avoidance than both community groups

The results suggest that social cognitive deficits in schizophrenia, and high social avoidance motivation in both schizophrenia and bipolar disorder, are distinct features of the clinical conditions and not byproducts of social isolation. In contrast, differences between clinical and control groups on levels of loneliness and social approach motivation were congruent with the groups' degree of social isolation.

The prevalence of mental disorders is considerably higher among incarcerated individuals than in the general population, but this burden is not matched by a proportional use of mental health services. Studies have found that incarcerated males are reluctant to seek help for mental health problems. Gaining knowledge of factors that influence incarcerated individuals to access or avoid professional help for mental health problems is important for tailoring interventions to address the mental health needs of this population. Promoting mental health service utilization among people in prison has the potential to reduce prison suicide rates and increase institutional functioning, thereby providing safer conditions for peers and staff, promoting rehabilitation, and reducing recidivism upon release.

This study explores personal, interpersonal, and systemic aspects that motivate incarcerated individuals to approach or avoid seeking help for mental health problems. While prior studies have primarily focused on barriers to help-seeking, this study also sheds light on facilitators for seeking professional help for people in prison.

Individual in-depth interviews were conducted with sixteen incarcerated males from three prisons in Northern Norway. The data analysis was inspired by Grounded Theory.

The majority of participants shared positive personal perspectives related to professional help-seeking, whereas the barriers were predominantly perceived to be of an interpersonal and systemic nature. Aspects that encouraged help-seeking were: regarding mental health treatment as necessary for successful rehabilitation, sufficient knowledge of when and how to contact mental health services, support from peers, having a higher ranking in the prison hierarchy, health services that are out-reaching, and prior positive experiences with professional help. The barriers to professional help-seeking were: lack of information about when and how to access mental health services, challenges with the self-referral system, perceived unavailability of services, confidentiality issues, and a prison climate that favoured a tough appearance.

The participants appeared to be more positive to seeking professional help for mental health problems than reported in previous studies with incarcerated individuals. Interpersonal and systemic aspects were emphasized by the participants as barriers to accessing mental health services; some participants even perceived these services to be unavailable to them. The results are relevant for designing interventions to promote help-seeking for mental health problems among people in prison.

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The medical case report (CR) is a vital and viable medical genre with a history of more than 3000 years. With a few exceptions, the CR has had a typical format that has been consistent with the ideals of brevity, conciseness, and a matter-of-fact approach. CR in general and psychiatric CR especially, may benefit from more systematically emphasising and integrating relevant biopsychosocial (BPS) aspects.

To discuss how to emphasise and integrate the BPS perspective in the CR.

Drawing on CR literature and our own experience as CR authors, we discuss how a broader BPS approach successfully can be included in the CR format.

Some central factors that could be considered when including a BPS perspective in the CR are: 1) Actively eliciting the patient’s perspective and including this in the final report. 2) Including relevant information about the life and circumstances of the patient beyond the basic demographic information. 3) Making an effort to preserve the patient’s privacy also when more BPS information is included. The psychological and social constituents of the patient’s life should be central in the BPS-inspired psychiatric CR.

The traditional CR has a long-standing history in medicine and follows a typial conscise and brief format. ‘Hard facts’ and biological information have typically filled most of the text. We argue that giving psychological and social information more attention would improve the quality of many CR, and that this is especially relevant for psychiatric CR.

While prison inmates have an increased risk of mental illness, psychiatric services are often less accessible and insufficient for this group. A low level of awareness or a fear of becoming stigmatised could also influence the help-seeking behaviour of some inmates.

To study the knowledge and beliefs regarding mental health and mental illness as well as the help-seeking behaviour of inmates in Norwegian prisons.

We describe a study of help-seeking behaviour and mental health literacy of prisoners. This is a qualitiative study involving in-depth interviews with inmates in prisons in North Norway.

Recruitment and data collection is ongoing. Central topics in the interviews are inmates’ associations regarding positive mental health and how they can enhance their own well-being while in prison, and how other external factors can contribute to increased well-being. Furthermore, the inmates are asked about their attitudes, beliefs, and knowledge regarding mental illness, and what they think might be factors that can contribute to the development of mental illness. Moreover, we cover topics such as the inmates’ beliefs regarding the treatment of mental illness, strategies for handling such health problems, and sources of information regarding mental health and mental illness.

The study will increase knowledge about how prisoners think about mental health and mental illness and the help-seeking behaviours of prison inmates. In a next step, this understanding can be utilized in improving information about well-being, mental illness, and psychiatric services to prisoners.

Patients with bipolar disorder exhibit consistent deficits in facial affect identification at both behavioral and neural levels. However, little is known about which stages of facial affect processing are dysfunctional.

Event-related potentials (ERPs), including amplitude and latency, were used to evaluate two stages of facial affect processing: N170 to examine structural encoding of facial features and N250 to examine decoding of facial features in 57 bipolar disorder patients, 30 schizophrenia patients and 30 healthy controls. Three conditions were administered: participants were asked to identify the emotion of a face, the gender of a face, or whether a building was one or two stories tall.

Schizophrenia patients' emotion identification accuracy was lower than that of bipolar patients and healthy controls. N170 amplitude was significantly smaller in schizophrenia patients compared to bipolar patients and healthy controls, which did not differ from each other. Both patient groups had significantly longer N170 latency compared to healthy controls. For N250, both patient groups showed significantly smaller amplitudes compared with controls, but did not differ from each other. Bipolar patients showed longer N250 latency than healthy controls; patient groups did not differ from each other.

Bipolar disorder patients have relatively intact structural encoding of faces (N170) but are impaired when decoding facial features for complex judgments about faces (N250 latency and amplitude), such as identifying emotion or gender.