Ten years ago, June 20th 2014, I published my first scientific article. It was a small step, but would send me on an amazing journey. More importantly however, this first study 10 years ago became the stepping-stone for a snowballing development that eventually would make effective psychological treatment more accessible to children and adolescents in need

As a clinical psychologist, I had met many children and adolescents with Obsessive-Compulsive Disorder (OCD). I had seen how OCD can impact a child’s life and disrupt the family system. I knew also that we had a very effective treamtent, that we could take a child from a state of very low functioning (= no school attendace possible, not meeting friends, doing rituals many hours every day, family life in chaos) to a state of relatively normal functioning in only a couple of weeks. Not always, but often. In fact, CBT (Cognitive Behavior Therapy) is effective in about 70 – 80% of children and adolescents with OCD.

However, waiting times to me and my CBT-trained colleagues were long, and they were getting longer. So when I had the opportunity to be part of a reseach project which aim it was to make CBT more accessible by developing Internet-delivered CBT, it was clear to me that I had to do it.

Long story short, this has been an incredible journey over the last 10 years, and I am immensely proud of the fact that our ICBT treatment for children and adolescents with OCD has been implemented in regular care in Sweden, making CBT available to so many more families.

To honor all of the countless contributors to this work, I have made the infographic below, summarizing all the hard work and wonderful outcomes on one page. It is a lot of densely packed information, so open it in full-screen mode if you can (or if you have an IMAX at home, it’s time to use it now). No one mentioned, no one forgotten, however, some names just need to be dropped here. For me personally, it has been an amazing and life-changing experience to work with such geniuses as Eva Serlachius, David Mataix-Cols, Sarah Vigerland, Christian Rück, Erik Andersson, Kristina Aspvall, Per Andrén, and the dream team at G22, CPF, and CNS Karolinska Institutet. Thanks everybody for this decade of awesomeness!

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