Mia Ramklint

MD, PhD, Specialist in child and adolescent psychiatry and psychiatry. Employed as professor i child and adolescent psychiatry.

I am a medical doctor, specialized in child and adolescent psychiatry and general psychiatry. I have basic training in both psychodynamic psycho-therapy and cognitive behavioral therapy. In addition to this, I have studied medical ethics at Stockholm University. I completed my dissertation in 2002 on a thesis on personality disorders in former child psychiatric patients, and have subsequently worked clinically within child and adolescent psychiatry (CAP) and with young adults in general psychiatry, as well as conducted clinical research in these areas. In 2018, I received Region Uppsala's research prize for my clinical studies. In parallel with clinical work and research, I have been teaching at the medical program, and I became a university lecturer in 2010, and a professor in 2020, and have received a total of eight teaching awards and was accepted as an excellent teacher in 2016. I teach psychiatry and child and adolescent psychiatry on several courses at Uppsala University. In addition, I teach communication skills and professionalism within the course Professional Development (PU). Moreover, I am part of the program committee for the medical program at Uppsala University.

In my research, I study lack of emotion regulation and poor impulse control in children, adolescents and young adults , and how these difficulties are related to mental disorders. My research is based on the bio-psycho-social model. It is a model in which genes and environment interact in the development of mental disorders. I examine vulnerability, as well as life events/trauma/environment that influence symptom development. I work with development of methods for how the problems should be identified, diagnosed, treated, and how the treatments should be evaluated.

Since emotions guide our behaviors, difficulties in regulating emotions and impulses, affects how we behave. Strong negative emotions can lead to behaviors aimed at regulating the emotion. It can sometimes lead to problematic behaviors such as substance abuse, self-starvation, binge eating, self-harming behaviors and suicidal acts. Lack of ability to regulate emotions is common in various psychiatric conditions, e.g. borderline personality syndrome, bipolar disorder, depression, eating disorders and substance abuse. The ability to regulate emotions also requires self-control functions, localized to the frontal lobes of the brain. In the so-called neuropsychiatric disabilities, ADHD and autism spectrum conditions, there is a reduced frontal lobe function and this is often related to difficulties with emotion regulation.