Having just arrived at home after four days of train travelling from south to north to east to south of Finland, seminars and speaking, it is time to reflect the time spent. There are some major advantages of doing stundent related work. Maybe the biggest advantage is that one is quite often faced with at least nominally fresh ideas whereas my other job is more about recycling old ones until some will become laws. Speaking with young people not yet cynical about societal issues also gives satisfaction.

Thus hundreds of kilometres of travelling is not tiresome but gives you new strength. We had an excellent seminar about the environment, sustainable development (or is it an oxymoron?) and renewable energy, and today we travelled to Kuopio to talk about mental health and healthcare of the Finns. Without getting too gloomy, there are some problems in both. In mental health, if friends cannot help, people are turning to the health care system, often too late and in vain given the resource problems. In other words, mental wellbeing does not necessarily follow material abudance.

Finns have long been specialists in mental health problems and the unhappy trend can be extrapolated to the future with some confidence. Quite sad.