Folkeakademiet i Drammen - Randi Rosenqvist - Criminally sane or completely crazy?

Then Folkeakademiet starts its spring programme, and we start with a real treat. Randi Rosenqvist is the person in Norway who knows the most about the mentally ill, sanity and punishment versus treatment, and has been a clear voice in the debate for several decades. She will come to us next Wednesday at 18.00.

Criminally sane or completely insane?

Why was Espen Andersen Bråthen, who killed five people at Kongsberg, judged insane, while Behring Breivik was sentenced to prison? And, how do you take care of the very sickest in today's criminal and health care? Randi Rosenqvist is coming to Drammen to take us on a journey into the psyche and the vagaries of psychiatry.

- Does society fail the seriously mentally ill who are unable to live an autonomous life without coming into conflict with their surroundings, asks Randi Rosenqvist in this lecture. Randi Rosenqvist is a psychiatrist with over 40 years' experience in forensic psychiatry, security psychiatry and prison psychiatry. Randi was employed by the correctional service from 2009 – 2020 – and was, among other things, responsible for observing Anders Behring Breivik in prison. She then concluded that Breivik was not psychotic.

Rosenqvist is a strong and critical voice for today's psychiatry - and the prison system. She is strongly critical of psychiatric patients being sent home with offers of short day care as the only help. - Every week, desperate relatives call me. It is unsustainable that the very sickest should have to live alone without the healthcare they need, says Rosenqvist.

Should not be co-located

In a couple of years, psychiatry and somatics in Drammen and the surrounding area will move into a new hospital building on Brakerøya. Rosenqvist thinks that is a bad idea.

- The worst psychiatric patients need a long hospital treatment, and are not suitable for co-location with the somatics, where the patients should stay for the shortest possible time. They need peace and completely different types of surroundings, says Rosenqvist, who would rather return to the institutions of old, with scenic surroundings and long treatment stays. 

Rosenqvist joined the forensic medicine commission as a 30-year-old and has contributed to changing forensic psychiatric practice. Today, Randi Rosenqvist is concerned with closing the number of beds in psychiatry, in 1990 there were 7,745 beds, in 2020 there were 3,284 beds.