ISPS is proud to recognize Klaus Lehtinen with an honorary lifetime membership, in gratitude for his many contributions to ISPS and to the field of humane approaches to psychosis.

Klaus Lehtinen’s most recent contribution to ISPS has been as chair of the 2024 international conference in Helsinki, Finland this past June. Aside from the daunting, multiple administrative tasks of organizing an international conference, Dr. Lehtinen has contributed a special gift in the form of helping ISPS apply the principles of the treatment approach of Open Dialogue to our own workings. The Executive Committee is looking forward to continuing this self-reflective work in our future work and conferences.

This is only the most recent in a long career of commitment to care, and innovation of care, for people with psychosis and their families, as well as to the organization of ISPS. Dr. Lehtinen served for many years on the executive board of ISPS, including serving as Treasurer of ISPS during much of that time.

Dr. Lehtinen is a psychiatrist and received training in family work and psychoanalytic psychotherapy. He has been especially focused on developing family work and family therapy. He authored and co-authored many papers over the past 40 years, focusing on early treatment and adolescent treatment, uses of medications – including low dose approaches, suicide and reduced mortality of those diagnosed with psychosis. But he is perhaps best known and appreciated for his clinical work and research, alongside his Scandinavian colleagues, on the influential NIPS (Nordic Investigation on Psychotherapy of Schizophrenia) project in the 1980s, and then on Need Adapted Treatment, which has evolved, with his continuing contributions, into our current Open Dialogue approach.

Dr. Lehtinen served as head of psychiatry at Tampere University Hospital in Finland from which he retired eight years ago. He has however continued to be active in volunteer positions – he is chair of ISPS Suomi (our Finnish chapter) and chair of the Pirkanmaa regional group of FinFami, an organization which provides information and support to the families of people recovering from mental illness. He is also on the boards of five more organizations locally and nationally in Finland. He is devoted to his wife of 52 years, his children, and grandchildren – and sailing with them.

I close with a quote from one of Dr. Lehtinen’s papers, which contains many of the important values of his life long work.

“Therapy meetings are professional scenes full of human thoughts, experiences, and emotions…Psychotic reactions should be seen as attempts to make sense of one’s experience and to cope with experiences that are so difficult that it has not been possible to construct a rational spoken narrative. Therapy meetings are thus a forum for construction and negotiating a positive sense of identity…(I)t is essential to have a reflective attitude towards both the outer and inner dialogue in treatment meetings…” (Borchers, Seikkula, Lehtinen, 2013)

Reference:

Borchers, P., Seikkula, J., & Lehtinen, K. (2013). Psychiatrists’ inner dialogues concerning workmates during need adapted treatment of psychosis. Psychosis, 5(1), 60-70. https://doi.org/10.1080/17522439.2012.664775

Biography by Julie Kipp