Okay, I will not spend seven minutes, but I will just give a brief background about my work.
I started out as a student in the late 1970s working with parents who lost children to cancer and other serious diseases. In 1980, I started working at the neonatal intensive care unit in Bergen for four years, where my main task was to follow up with parents who lost children at that ward, and also all the sudden infant death syndrome cases. When my work was better known, I was also asked to come and consult with the intensive care unit and the acute emergency ward. Then I went over to the university and spent four years as a senior researcher, and also did my Ph.D., which was named “Parents Who Lose a Child”. That was the subject for my thesis.
In 1988, I started the Centre for Crisis Psychology, which has now been part of the university since 2017, but I've been working clinically with parents who lose children and children who lose parents for all my professional life.
I have also been involved in research following different kinds of deaths. I was very much involved after the terror in Norway, in 2011. We did a study on the effects on parents on losing children. That's been a major theme throughout my work area. I have the clinical experience from meeting and also working with professionals and support groups in Norway, and then the research experience.
One of the studies that I conducted some years back was with more than 300 parents. We filled in questionnaires and also did qualitative interviews on relationship issues and how this affects the relationship. I wrote of several aspects in my professional practice and then also in the research, and feel that I know that area fairly well. I have written about 20 books and 300 articles, not all on the subject of parental loss, but very much in this area.
I'm a clinician at heart and I do what I call the research work, but it's always been the clinical work that has been most important where I'm also able to use the research to better the situation for parents who lose children.
That's what I thought I would say about my background.