Collaboration in psychiatry between Archangelsk and Northern Norway.

The historical roots of international cooperation in the Barents Region reach back to Viking times. From the 1740s, the Pomor trade between Northern Norway and NorthWestern Russia constituted a necessary as well as a natural exchange between neighbouring peoples in the North. A separate language, Russo-Norwegian, was developed to promote communication and cooperation. The Russian Revolution put a temporary stop to this interchange. Towards the end of World War II, however, The Red Army came as the liberators of Finnmark. Later, perestroika and the fall of the Iron Curtain spelled the end of Soviet isolationism. Since then, Norwegian-Russian collaboration has gained new momentum. The Kirkenes Declaration, which formalized Norwegian-Russian international cooperation in the Euro-Arctic Region, was signed in 1993 (1). Since 1999, project funding has been available through the Barents Health Programme. Collaboration on health between Tromsø and North-Western Russia dates back to the early 1990s. Since then, the Northern Norway Regional Health Authority has signed general agreements on cooperation with Murmansk and Archangelsk oblasts, in which the parties commit themselves to collaboration in the fields of public health, health services and networking. The collapse of the Soviet Union brought with it increasing social insecurity, inequality and unemployment. Mental health problems have become widespread, including a high incidence of depressive disorders, suicides and high mortality from alcohol-related diseases (2). Psychiatry was regarded as a medical field in which the need for renewal was most prominent.