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Finland's public Instute for Health and Welfare (THL) and National Pension Institute (KELA) conducts annual reviews of Finnish peoples physical and mental health. Since 2010, Finnish people's ability to work and function has deteriorated, and is predicted to continue to deteriorate if the government don't start acting. This is consistent with the assessments I have done, and talked about, since, 2019, and which most people have ignored.
Link to source.
Consistent with my claim four years ago, the reason Finnish peoples lack work performance ability is attributed to issues with mental health.
They also mention obesity, which more likely should be addressed as a welfare condition. Obesity is not an explanation but a biological marker for welfare diseases (see presentation by Dr Robert Lustig).
They also mention poor nutrition. In January 2020, I was invited to the Department of Food and Nutrition at the University of Helsingfors, to open that years seminar series for experts on Food and Nutrition: What’s the Prospect of sustainable Food? The Case for mental health.
During my talk I challenged the prevailing Finnish view that saturated fats causes cardiovascular events, and I argued that the reason Finnish people have health issues, paradoxically, is The North Karelia Project. My claims caused some academic heat - some colleagues disagreed and some agreed.
In support of my claim, here are some of the references I used: Ede (2019), Howard et al. (2006), Teicholz (2014), and Ramsden et al. 2016. All acknowledged by international experts, but rejected by some Finnish nutrition people.
Despite that Finland is topping UN Happiness ranking for the sixth consecutive year, the inquiry does not assess happiness but Life satisfaction. And whether the sample (N=1000) represents Finland's two major socio-cultures or not, is in the unknown (the main author of the report refuses to answer that question). It's fair to say that the report is misleading.
Because of the result from the [misleading] Life-satisfaction-report, it's used by politicians like former prime minister Sanna Marin, in their effort to attract foreigners to move to Finland.
Link to source.
Sweden is Finland's largest trading partner and the countries, and for the past 1000 years, Finland and Sweden shared a common language and culture. But paradoxically, Marin and others don't aim to attract immigrants from Sweden!?
When it comes to happiness and public health, public data has since long been pointing in the opposite direction.
During spring 2022, a director at Finland's ministry of education and culture, claimed that also the PISA-ranking was misleading, and that Finnish kids fail reading comprehension and numeracy. The latter is crucial for Rational thinking.
And after the summer of 2022, the minister of education, Li Andersson, warned that Finnish boys are failing school. And speaking to another minister, Ville Skinnari, he said that the simple jobs (n~600 000) that in a historical perspective gave these boys a chance, are gone.
On top of that, on a conference about children's legal rights, Finland's Child Commissary, Elina Pekkarinen, said that 20 % of Finnish children and adolescents born 1997 or later, has mental issues (that a staggering 265 000 young humans). And even though Dr Pekkarinen wrote her doctorate in social work, she was more than adamant that the mental issues were explained by either the climate or neuropsychatric issues. Both her propositions are highly unlikely.
During the spring of 2022, Helsingfors police claimed that women's relational aggressiveness is a huge problem in Finland. That claim is consistent with science demonstrating that children's lack of emotions and social adjustment is explained by women's relational aggressiveness (Crick and Grotpeter, 1995; Österberg, 2004), which are explained by mental issues (neuroticism to Borderline Personality Disorder). See: Zalewski et al. 2014. Addition: Ruffalo (2024).
Data also reveal that Finland is topping:
- The global Alzheimer's ranking (Österberg, 2022).
- The suicide ranking in Fennoskandia and Denmark (the Nordic Countries except Iceland) (Österberg, 2023).
Finland has issues with physical and mental health, and I'm guessing that politicians aren't that eager to talk about it. Due to my role as a psychological scientist, during the communal election in 2021, I got in contact with some politicians. Most of them mentioned people's lack of mental health in their campaign.
Since then, some mothers with support from social workers, have murdered either their former husbands, or their child (see list (In Swedish)), and approximately 45 Finns (mostly men) have committed suicide (Österberg, 2023).
Adding to that, there are some staggering 265 000 young people growing up who will need support from social and medical services. Their work and tax contribution will be low.
Why has this happened in Finland?
It's a complex question, so the answer will not be finite, but rather a starting point for a discussion.
Part of the explanation is nutrition; Long time ago, Finland became part of something called the Seven Countries Study. The project was inspired by the findings from Swedish biochemist Haqvin Malmros (1895-1995). Dr. Malmros attributed lack of health, including Cardiovascular disease (CVD), on dietary cholesterol and saturated fats (Malmros, 1950). The diet-heart hypothesis was born.
And as the name suggests, the project sampled data from seven countries.
The approach was epidemiology - the study and analysis of the distribution (who, when, and where), patterns and determinants of health and disease conditions in a defined population.
And they collected data about people's diet mainly by sending out questionnaires for people to fill in. And because respondents are asked to consult their episodic memory, which is constructive in a social manner (Schacter and Addis, 2007), outcomes from food questionnaires aren't that reliable.
Since the future is not an exact repetition of the past, simulation of future episodes requires a system that can draw on the past in a manner that flexibly extracts and recombines elements of previous experiences (Schacter and Addis, 2007, abstract).In Finland they sampled data from the Swedish-Finnish population in the south-west (Åbo), and the uracil-Finnish population is the north-east (Karelia).
The data revealed that despite the fact that people in both samples had a similar diet, the prevalence of cardiovascular disease was three times as high in Karelia compared to Åbo (Teicholz, 2014).
In 2016 Ramsden et al. published a paper with data from Seven countries study project. And it wasn't epidemiological data, it was data that could be used for something called randomized control trials (RCTs). A RCT makes possible conclusion about cause and effect. The result rejected the diet-heart hypothesis.
THL and KELA claim that Finnish health had a positive development between 1970s to 2010, but that can't be true.
Finland never took notice of the result from Åbo, they only focused on Karelia. Therefore, most Finns have knowledge about the North Karelia Project (NKP) but are ignrant about the more positive result från Åbo. And the University of Helsingfors prided the NKP as very successful because they convinced people to lower their consumption of butter and salt.
But data from statistics Finland contradicts those happy-facts; soon after the result from NKP started to be implemented, Finland saw a rise in Alzheimer's. Finland is now topping the ranking for Alzheimer's. Sweden is No 10 (Österberg, 2022). Woman are twice as likely to contract the disease. Another important thing is that prevalence within Finland should be lower closer the closer you get to the costal areas.
Note that the prevalence of women's domestic violence as an function of mental issues (neuroticism - Borderline Personality Disoorder) has been ignored by government people. The mentioning from the police was coincidental, but an important indicant of an ignored problem. Note: it may be that these mentala issues among women can be a precursor för Alzheimer's.
Adding to the above, on April 11 this year, during a residents discussion organized by the city of Helsingfors in collaboration with an organization called Arbis, which provide education in Swedish, one researcher made the claim that "Swedish speaking Finns are happier and live longer" [sic].
Health is a very complex concept, and there are many different opinions about it. But things like nutrients is a given, and socio-culture may add to the model.
Also read: Finland retains Life-satisfaction title, suicide remain highest among the Nordic countries, and children have mental issues due to [women's] home conflicts.
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