Experiences from a consultative journey to Greenland presented by a child psychiatrist and a psychologist.

Abstract

This consultative journey to Greenland was the first to be made recently by a child psychiatrist and should be given serious considerations. The material is selected because of the arbitrariness in the referrals as child psychiatry is not (yet) continuously available on Greenland. When this is taken into consideration there seems to be an overrepresentation of emotional disorders, pathological and prolonged reactions of grief and of crisis and of conduct disorders. In connection with this we have put forward some hypotheses that the difficulties perhaps are caused by more specific conditions in the Greenlandic society, for instance, the Greenlandic "way of communication" and changes of upbringing of children, particularly boys.