I had a call with a friend back in Austria yesterday. And this is a repeating pattern: When I tell them anecdotes about what happens to me or friends here in Sweden, they are usually in shock or absolute disbelief. This blog post is about some of my experiences living in Sweden now for almost four years, and as I want to say in hindsight, those four years were four years too long. This blog is about the absolute state of Sweden in 2025.

But let’s talk about yesterday’s conversation with my friend first. The usual impression of Sweden is still the image that Sweden had maybe 20 years ago. Maybe even going back further to the times of real social democracy in Sweden, back to the times of Olof Palme and friends, whom I believe to have been of the greatest prime ministers in Europe. Palme sadly died in 28 Feb 1986 under mysterious circumstances. An event that I believe led to the slow downfall of Swedish social democracy, its society’s ideals and values, Sweden’s social services and public institutions, and healthcare. Today Sweden is a dog-eat-dog place, at least from the perspective of an expatriate living with children for four years in the city of Malmö, a city that some jokingly refer to as ‘Crime City,’ but there’s a much darker side to this joke. Let me explain.

Healthcare

Beyond the widely shared memes about Swedish healthcare, there’s some incidents that happened to myself or friends that I want to share here.

Hospital

A while back I felt really sick and asked a friend to drop me at Kvälls- och helgmottagningen Södervärn so I could get a check-up. Did I have a flu? I had strong fever, headache, the usual symptoms of a flu. And usually I’ll stay at home and let it resolve, but the high temperature sustained over the course of many days wasn’t usual. So there I tried to register myself at the reception at the evening hospital: Oops, I had forgotten my social security card, but guess what, I had a phone with me with a photo of it, and my ‘BankID,’ which is the digital way of identifying yourself in Sweden across healthcare, banking, and online services of city and state. Still that didn’t seem to fare very well. When I insisted to the receptionist that I wanted to see a doctor and that I was willing to wait as long as it takes (there wasn’t a big queue of people after all), the receptionist insisted that she take my temperature, and after she did, through the glass, she insisted that I should go home. No doctor for me. (Mind you I didn’t mention to her that I pay upwards of 10_000 EUR in taxes here, every month, but we don’t wanna play the privilege card, instead we’ll try to fix it for everyone.)

In a sharp contrast, when in Austria I went to the hospital to diagnose and treat shingles and a laceration of the capsule this Summer, I was seen by a doctor the same day, treated with some sort of plaster, advice on how to treat it further with referral to a pharmacy. As for the shingles, I got a proper diagnosis with a blood test and the appropriate medication. All in the same day! And here’s the kicker: I didn’t even have my social security card from Sweden with me, nor my European health insurance card.

Now fast forward a couple of weeks and the Austrian hospital sends me an invoice for their services. I ignore the first letter because I have lots to do. The second reminder comes in and I call up services in Sweden. The result? I can pay the costs out of pocket and send in the invoice from Austria, and someone would check if I was liable for a refund. Let that sink in.

Then I had the crazy idea of calling the Austrian hospital. The outcome was that they put their invoice on halt (no more reminders), while promising to take care of the matter and contact Swedish healthcare directly! That’s social democracy for you. The other is a hollow system of healthcare, which turns out to be both understaffed and mostly manned by private consultants. With the obvious policy to let people rot in the first place, and ask questions later.

The other incident I want to tell you about is that of a friend whose child had a condition of the spine, leading to back pain and abnormal posture. As it turns out in their specific case, the traditional medical approach is to treat with a night brace. The treatment is also very time critical in children that have lots of growth left.

My friends experience at Skåne University Hospital, the third largest hospital in Sweden? The doctors examined the child about a year back and detected the child’s condition, called Scoliosis. Again, the standard approach is to observe the development of the spine every three months, even in Sweden. What happened instead? The initial referral from last year, after the first diagnosis, was lost, leading to huge delays. The child was called in back again after a full year, instead of three months, after the child’s school nurse had found out that no treatment plan was made, and therefore called up the hostpital again. The hospital reacted with doing another examination, which revealed that the child’s condition had progressed within that year. The doctor’s reaction who by the way was also a consultant and not employed by the hospital? It wouldn’t have mattered. We wouldn’t have done anything anyway. It’s fine, just wait it out. Physiotherapy? Well the child can have some physiotherapy although it probably won’t help. But I can give you a therapy session of 15 minutes every three months or so. But believe me, it’s really useless. When it gets worse, we’ll operate her. Note that operation usually involves limited mobility for the child in this case, as well as a stay in the hostpital that is many weeks long, post-OP.

The parent, not satisfied with the solutions offered by Skåne University Hospital, did his own research and found out that the treatment offered differs wildly from standard care procedures. That does not only concern the lost the referral part. To add insult to injury (or the other way around), even after the second examination revealed a progression, the doctor decided to just let it be. My friend reached out to Sahlgrenska University Hospital to find out that the doctor there recommends immediate treatment with either a night-time or day-time brace, that all indications are that the treatment should begin immediately. My friend filed a complaint against Skåne University Hospital, and the child will eventually be fine with the proper treatment that they will be getting now, but a taste of disgust will likely never leave my friend’s mouth.

(If you are press or a concerned parent and you want to learn more about this case, feel free to contact me.)

Psychiatry

Last year, by sheer accident, I met a new friend on the streets of Malmö. A young, sporty looking woman in her mid-twenties and I came into a conversation. I learned that she had just been released from on of same Skåne University Hospital’s psychiatric units, called Vuxenpsykiatriavdelning 88 psykos Malmö. And what I learned about this girl shocked me to my core. Let’s call her Vicky, it’s not her real name. I learned that she had been released from said psychiatric ward, where she had received psychotropic drugs in high doses and on a regular, out onto the streets from Malmö, basically without any after care of proper attention to what will happen to her after she was released. But let me explain what I mean.

Vicky was on psychotropic drugs, against her anxiety and perhaps psychosis, and she had a receipt to collect her drugs from the pharmacy. But it turns out that at the time that Vicky was released from the psychiatry, she was not in posession of a proper ID, which means she couldn’t identify herself at the pharmacy, something that is a requirement if you want to collect prescription drugs here in Sweden. When she had tried to receive her drugs from the pharmacy, the reaction of the pharmacist was usually: not my problem. And I found out that this attitude is prevalent among Swedish institutions.

Further, I found out that Vicky only had a friend, maybe an ex-boyfriend, to stay with. Was she assigned a social worker from Malmö to allow her to get her life back under control? Yes. Did that social worker invite her soon after she was released? Was she invited frequently to chat with someone? Did she get any psychological help within the psychiatric ward or outside that extended beyond given her her prescribed drugs? Absolutely not. What a shock that was for me to find out...

But it continued. I offered her a room in my apartment and she stayed there for a while, so I could exactly observe what happened and most importantly what did not happen. Meetings with the social worker from Malmö City only happened on the phone, maybe in intervals of one week. Was she referred to other centres or institutions to talk to others or reintegrate into society after her time out? Not at all. The only thing that Malmö Stad offered was essentially some apathic calls with her social workers and a little money in cash, but only under conditions which I didn’t really know about. The lack of a social safety net for Vicky was absolute daunting. No ID card, no place to stay, no access to medication, no psychological supervision. This is the state of Swedish healthcare.

And it continued. When I took care of her and bought her a phone (!) so that she could communicate again with the world properly, including her social worker, we decided to some day visit the other inmates at the psychiatric ward, because that was where she actually found some friends and wanted to chat and talk and see how everyone was doing. When I entered the ward with her, I had my third shocking experience.

It turns out that Vuxenpsykiatriavdelning 88 psykos Malmö or, for short, Avdelning 88, had very problematic symbology. If you know anything about the history of the 20th century, you should know that 88 is a very problematic number to begin with, to use for anything. In Germany and elsewhere, this number is for instance banned from football matches. A coincidence you might say? Well, let me know if you still think it’s a coincidence after you see this photo of a shower sign that I took myself while visiting Department 88:

Highly problematic iconography used in Vuxenpsykiatriavdelning 88 psykos Malmö. Photographed by myself in 2024. Free use.

Now consider that this isn’t just your normal rehab. Outcasts from society are herded here for sometimes many months at a time, and they are forcefully given psychotropic drugs, before they are spit out onto the streets again.

(Again, if you are press or a concerned person and you want to learn more about this, feel free to contact me.)

To be continued

This is a draft and I’ll have to take a break here. Future topics that I’ll hopefully soon write about will include: