Rate My Professor Mikael Landén

Mikael Landén is Professor and Chief Physician in the Department of Psychiatry and Neurochemistry at the Institute of Neuroscience and Physiology, University of Gothenburg, where he serves as Deputy Section Head. He earned his medical degree in 1991 and PhD in medicine in 1999 with the thesis 'Transsexualism: Epidemiology, Phenomenology, Regret after Surgery.' Appointed Docent in 2004, he became Associate Professor in the Department of Clinical Neuroscience at the University of Gothenburg the same year and full Professor in 2009. He also holds positions at Karolinska Institutet as Principal Researcher in the Department of Medical Epidemiology and Biostatistics since 2022 and Professor in the Department of Clinical Sciences, Psychiatry.

Landén leads the Affective Disorders research group, investigating neurobiological mechanisms of mood disorders, including bipolar disorder, to identify biomarkers for diagnosis, treatment response prediction, and prognosis toward personalized psychiatric care. His research integrates clinical practices through national quality registers and projects such as the S:t Göran Bipolar Project, a longitudinal study phenotyping bipolar patients via diagnostic, neuropsychological, neurological, imaging, genetic, and biochemical assessments; the ANGI study on biological and environmental factors in anorexia nervosa; the PREFECT study on electroconvulsive therapy predictors for depression; and the STANLEY study on gene-environment interactions in bipolar disorder risk. He collaborates internationally in consortia like the Psychiatric Genomics Consortium, ENIGMA Bipolar Disorder Working Group, and International Consortium on Lithium Genetics. With over 51,000 citations on Google Scholar, key publications include 'Pharmacological treatment and risk of psychiatric hospital admission in bipolar disorder' (2017), 'Risk factors for suicide in bipolar disorder: a cohort study of 633,672 patients with a Swedish national sample' (2018, with Caroline Hansson et al.), and studies on manic episodes and brain changes (2021). In 2019, he received Läkartidningen's Article of the Year award.