Researcher in the field of mental health and employment, in the research group Working Life. Most of my work has been focused on effect evaluations of interventions for various marginalized groups. My primary focus has been on young adults who are not in employment or education, and I lead the NORCE initiative on Youth Exclusion.
My PhD project was a randomized controlled trial of Individual Placement and Support (IPS) for young adults at risk of early disability due to various social and/or health-related problems. This is an important and vulnerable group at risk of early exclusion from working life, and the study showed that IPS was effective in helping this group enter the labor market. I am currently working on similar projects involving refugees in Bergen, and people with chronic pain conditions in the Oslo-area.
My interest on non-pharmacological interventions to improve mental health and wellbeing does however exceed the field of employment and worklife: I am also a part of GAMUT, as the principal investigator of the multinational cluster-randomised trial Music Interventions for Dementia and Depression in ELderly care (MIDDEL). Project website: https://middel-project.eu
