Bad apple #4. On the risk of meeting Finnish people with mental health issues. Another sad case.

Yesterday I suffered from another blow when an irrationally aggressive man verbally attacked me here in Finland. The aggressor's concerns are the shortcomings of Finland, lifestyle issues like food and health, my expertise. For some reason, he, like a few other people here in Finland, can't take the fact that I was recruited to Finland because of my expertise. The aggressor's family earns their life support from a candy factory, and the aggressor's father died of cancer (likely from eating sugar). But the aggressor wants everyone to accept that it's meat which causes cancer. Another catch is, it seems that the aggressor doesn't work, and has issues connecting with women. I predict someone will be the victim of this aggressor's physical violence. 4 pages.

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Yesterday I suffered from another blow when an irrationally aggressive man verbally attacked me here in Helsingfors. It wasn't the first time, and it's not happening that frequently, but it's still hard to get used to it. This time, it happened during a coffee meeting at a church where a man shouted shut the fuck up! to me and then had a 30-45 minute long tirade where he repeatedly shouted grose insults against me. The priest, who sat opposite the aggressor, kept silent, but the aggressor's own mother, an elderly lady who sat next to him and whom I have had a good relationship with, tried to calm him down, but that didn't help. Instead, that increased the man's anger – accusing her of taking my (the victims) side. A staffer who sat next to me and opposite to the aggressor repeatedly told him to stop, but his aggression continued. Then the staffer walked around the table so that he was standing behind the aggressor, grabbed his shoulders with both hands and said: – stop it! That surprised the aggressor, but it didn't stop him. One person left. On his way out, the aggressor tried to hit me in the face with a soda can.

This anecdote can of course be interpreted in different ways. For example, one lady at the table even tried to attribute the aggressor's behavior to me!? That was a very strange experience.

From a more general point of view, the aggressors behavior is refered to as “the bad apple effect”:

“Yes, there is a study from 2006 known as the “Bad Apple Effect.” This research was conducted by William Felps, Terence Mitchell, and Eliza Byington at the University of Washington. The study examined how one negative team member can significantly impact the overall performance and dynamics of a group (Co-pilot)

“This paper presents a review and integrative model of how, when, and why the behaviors of one negative group member can have powerful, detrimental influence on teammates and groups. We define the negative group member as someone who persistently exhibits one or more of the following behaviors: withholding effort from the group, expressing negative affect, or violating important interpersonal norms. We then detail how these behaviors elicit psychological states in teammates (e.g. perceptions of inequity, negative feelings, reduced trust), how those psychological states lead to defensive behavioral reactions (e.g. outbursts, mood maintenance, withdrawal), and finally, how these various manifestations of defensiveness influence important group processes and dynamics (e.g. cooperation, creativity). Key mechanisms and moderators are discussed as well as actions that might reduce the impact of the bad apple. Implications for both practice and research are discussed” (Felps et al. 2006).

“A single “bad apple” can reduce team performance by 30 – 40%. That's not a typo – one negative person can slash your team's effectiveness by nearly half” (The Leaders Guide).

“Common defensive mechanisms employees use to cope with a “bad apple” include denial, social withdrawal, anger, anxiety and fear. Trust in the team deteriorates and as the group loses its positive culture, members physically and psychologically disengage themselves from the team” (Gardner, 2007).

I'm in Finland because of my expertise (I'm a research psychologist by training). Part of being a researcher is the third mission. That means, besides research and lecturing, our job is to bring higher order knowledge to the general population. So when I have an opinion about things, I typically use my expertise, which is in:

• experimental emotional psychology (Österberg, 2001).
  
  
• how parent-relations impact a child's and youth executive functions (Österberg, 2004 a),
  
  
• how to use the executive functions in a prospective manner, like in executive leadership, decision making, organizational learning, entrepreneurial thinking, which is about the “knowledge structures” that people use to make judgments and decisions that involve the evaluation, creation and growth of opportunities (Cacciolatti och Lee, 2015; Mitchell et al. 2002; Österberg, 2012), as well as creativity for problem–solving and innovation (Österberg,2004 b, 2012; 2021 a b)
  
  
• Nutrition psychology – how we think about food and how food influences how we think (Österberg, 2019, 2020 a b ; 2021; 2022; 2023, 2024),

Since I was recruited to Finland as a researcher (2018), I have attended numerous meetings and conferences (n>500), including many of these weekly coffee-meetings (n>125). In most of these cases, I have had very pleasant conversations with all sorts of people. They typically think it's valuable to get information free of charge from an expert (it is). This is based on heterodoxy or viewpoint diversity, a prerequisite for academic reasoning – to tame the devil within you (Pinker, 2011).

Yesterday's aggressor has been one of the exceptions who have issues taming the devil within him. These people typically try to dominate conversations with their own opinions, and use their voice to block other people from speaking their minds. This is called dogma – the opposite of heterodoxy.

The current aggressor's concerns are:

1. the shortcomings of Finland, his native country. He despises Finland, and thinks everything is better where I come from – Sweden.
   
   
2. Lifestyle issues like food and health. He's convinced that meat, animal fat, and salt is bad for health, including cancer.
   
   
3. my expertise. For some reason, he, like a few other people here in Finland, can't take the fact that I was recruited to Finland because of my expertise.

Despite some Finns refusing to accept my expertise, my expertise is the very reason I'm in Finland, and will be the means with which I respond.

Here's what should be common knowledge (Thomas et al. 2014) about food and health:

• Our species ancestors adapted to animal source food millions of years ago (ASF; Mann, 2018).
  
  
• There's no risk of consuming ASF (Han et al. 2019; Johnston et al. 2019; Zeraatkar et al. 2019), rather the opposite.
  
  
• Abstaining from ASF is related to mental health issues, like neuroticism, anxiety, and depression (Dobersek et al. 2023).
  
  
• Applying a carnivore or ketogenic diet, will improve your mental health, and even put severe diseases/disorders into remission (Dobersek et al. 2024; Laurent and Taque, 2025; Newiss, 2025).
  
  
• Sugar is pure, white, and deadly, and together with ultra-processed stuff, is related to the explosive prevalence lifestyle diseases like Type 2 and 3-diabetes, high blood pressure, non-alcoholic fatty liver disease (NAFLD and NASH), and cancer (Blanco-Roja et al. 2019; Dehghan et al. 2023; Hall et al. 2019 ; Lane et al. 2021; Lustig, 2017; Morales-Berstein et al. 2023; Zhao et al. 2024; Yudkin, 1972).

There are two major factors at play to explain any person's lack of impulse control:

1. Complex childhood trauma, like losing your father. It typically lasts for a very long time. I spoke with some therapists about it, and they said that the trauma will remain throughout the lifespan (e.g. Malmquist, 1986).
   
   
2. Malnutrition. Depriving the brain from animal source food (ASF) increases neuroticism, anxiety, and depression (Dobersek et al. 2023). That typically means being unable to handle viewpoint diversity =>Cortisol will flood the organism which manifests in fight-flight behavior (Goleman, 2006).
   
   
3. Having low testosterone levels can lead to aggression (e.g.Eisenegger et al. 2010, 2011) like parochial altruism (Reimers 1 and Diekhof, 2015; Pisor and Ross, 2024)

How common is this in Finland? That is, to what extent would you expect to be attacked by people like this guy?

Here's a list of information I have gathered from government arms and organisations:

1. The health of Finns has been declining since at least 2010.
   
   
2. Childhood obesity is rampant (Public Health Agency of Finland, 2020).
   
   
3. Mental challenges are rampant, especially Finnish women's relational aggression (psychological violence, in and outside the home) (Helsinki Police, 2022). (Of course, there are also angry Finnish men, but the prevalence is significantly lower.)
   
   
4. Too many Finnish children cannot cope with reading comprehension and numeracy (Ministry of Education and Culture, 2022).
   
   
5. Too many Finns are not able to work (KPA/THL; 2023).
   
   
6. Finland has the highest prevalence of Alzheimer's/dementia in the world – twice as high as in neighboring Sweden (EU/OECD, 2023). The marker for Alzheimer's/dementia: aggression. 🤔
   
   
7. Research at the University of Helsinki has collapsed (Bäckgren, HS, 2023).
   
   
8. Child poverty is significant (n>130,000; Finlandsvenska Barnrättsdagarna, 2023).
   
   
9. Entrepreneurship and innovation thinking are at rock bottom (Atte Jääskeläinen, Sitra 2024).
   
   
10. Too many Finnish children fail to master reading comprehension and numeracy (Ministry of Education and Culture, April 2025).
    
    
11. An estimated 77% of women and 70% of men will be diagnosed with a mental, behavioral and neurological developmental disorder during their lifetime (Helsingfors University of Helsinki).

Unfortunately, it seems that you are at higher risk to meet people with mental challenges in Finland compared to Sweden.

There's another important catch to this story. The aggressor's family earns their money from candy production. The company is led by his older brother, who at his twenties had to take over the role as managing director after their father fell victim to terminal cancer.

So, the sugar which provides the family with an affluent lifestyle, likely was the main reason the aggressors fathers suffered from terminal cancer, and the boys from Complex childhood truama. That may be the reason the aggressor wants everyone to accept the false claim that meat, but not sugar, causes cancer. Another catch is, it seems like the aggressor doesn't work, and has issues connecting with women. I predict someone will be the victim of this aggressor's physical violence.

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More about my expertise:

Executive coaching for CEOs/managers and workshops to facilitate Organizational Performance, Learning, and Creativity for Problem Solving | Lectures: Nutrition for physical and mental health | Course/lecture: children's emotional and social adjustment and cognitive development | Language training - Swedish | Academy Competency | CV | Teaching skills and experience | Summary of research project | Instagram | Linkedin | YouTube-channel | TikTok | X