But I wanted to experience the legendary “Apple magic.” I wanted to see what the absolute pinnacle of their hardware and software integration felt like.

So, in March 2025, I made a massive financial commitment. I went all-in, purchasing the iPhone 16 Pro, an iPad Pro M4, AirPods Pro 2nd Gen, an Apple TV, AirTags, and an Apple Pencil Pro. These flagship devices were significantly more expensive than my Samsung setup, but I was buying into a promise: seamless integration, premium performance, and the highly anticipated “Apple Intelligence” they had promised would revolutionize their platforms.¹

It didn’t take long for the buyer’s remorse to set in.

A Timeline of Broken Promises

The initial failure was Apple’s inability to deliver Apple Intelligence on time. When iOS 18 rolled out, instead of stepping into the future, I felt like I had been thrown four years back in time. The capabilities of my brand-new, premium iPhone 16 Pro were fundamentally lagging behind what my older Samsung S22 Plus was doing before Gemini even became a standard feature.

Then came the iOS 26 cycle. Apple heavily marketed a suite of new features, but as a user living in the European Union, I quickly realized the fine print: the best features were either locked to US English or completely geoblocked in the EU. Features as simple as iPhone Mirroring were stripped from my multi-thousand-euro devices.²

But today was the breaking point.

I recently updated to the iOS 27 beta, eager to finally experience the revamped Siri interface and the next-generation AI features Apple has been showcasing. After installing the update, I searched everywhere. Nothing. The new Siri experience was completely missing.

After digging through Apple’s official statements and reading through frustrating Reddit threads, the reality hit me: Apple has intentionally blocked the new Siri AI in the EU.³

Their justification? The European Union’s Digital Markets Act (DMA).⁴

The Regulatory Standoff: Privacy as a Weapon

Under the DMA, gatekeeper companies like Apple are required to allow interoperability. If Apple gives its own AI (Siri) deep, system-level hooks into iOS to read context, messages, and screen data, the EU dictates they must offer a secure way for third-party assistants to have that same access.

In June 2026, Apple proposed a “Trusted System Agent” to act as a middleman for this data, which the European Commission rejected.⁵ Following a major court loss on July 8, 2026, where Europe’s General Court upheld the DMA’s strict gatekeeper rules against Apple’s appeals,⁶ Apple threw its hands up. Instead of complying, they took their ball and went home, indefinitely blocking the new Siri AI for the entire European market.

Apple’s public defense is entirely predictable: Privacy and Security. They claim that granting third-party AIs the deep system access required by the DMA is fundamentally dangerous, arguing that it is impossible to mitigate the risks of bad actors scraping user data.

But when you actually scrutinize this argument, it completely falls apart under basic technical and logical analysis.

1. The Solvable Engineering Problem (The Waterfall Proxy Solution)

Apple’s claim that it is “impossible” to safely comply with the interoperability rules is an insult to their users’ intelligence. As anyone with a background in software web development knows, secure data isolation and intermediary routing are highly solvable problems.

Instead of allowing third-party AI systems direct, unfettered access to core system hooks, Apple could easily engineer a waterfall proxy architecture at the OS level. This middle layer would sequentially intercept, authenticate, and safely sandbox third-party AI requests before routing them to system apps. It would act as a secure buffer, ensuring external assistants never directly touch raw underlying data. Apple has the best software engineering talent in the world; they didn’t fail to build this because it was a technical impossibility. They failed because they chose to spend their resources paying lawyers to fight the EU in court, hoping to protect their monopoly.

2. The Patronizing “Consent” Argument

Apple’s stance relies on the idea that users are fundamentally incapable of managing their own risks. In modern software, we already use a robust “inform and opt-in” model. iOS asks us explicitly if we want to grant an app access to our camera, our location, or our microphone.

If Apple genuinely cared about user choice, they could implement a clear, highly specific warning screen:

“Warning: Granting this third-party AI system access allows it to process your screen and personal data. Proceed at your own risk.”

Let the user decide. Instead, Apple’s logic is patronizing: We don’t trust you to make the right choice with your own hardware, so we are stripping the feature entirely.

3. The macOS Hypocrisy

The most glaring hole in Apple’s defense is macOS. On a Mac, you can download whatever third-party software you want from the open web, grant it deep accessibility permissions to read your screen, and Apple trusts you to manage it. macOS is currently exempt from the DMA’s strictest mobile gatekeeper rules, so Apple allows this freedom there.⁷ The “unmitigated danger” they claim exists on iOS mysteriously vanishes when it comes to their desktop operating system.

Double Gatekeeping: Software Blocks and Hardware Taxes

To make matters worse, Apple is running a double-gatekeeping scheme. Even if you live outside the EU and can access these features, Apple has weaponized software updates to force a hardware super-cycle.

While the baseline requirement for Apple Intelligence started at the iPhone 15 Pro, running the localized, advanced voice models introduced for iOS 27 now requires devices with at least 12GB of RAM⁸—conveniently locking out users who bought flagships just a year or two ago. They are squeezing users on hardware requirements while simultaneously cutting off software access for an entire continent.

Meanwhile, competitors like Google and Samsung actually chose to respect their users. They adapted to the EU’s regulations, pushed Gemini and Galaxy AI to their European customers, and even backported advanced features to older hardware like the S22 series.⁹ They played by the rules and delivered the technology.

Prediction: The Long Walk to 2027

Where does this leave us? Right now, Apple is playing a corporate game of chicken, using millions of European users as leverage to pressure regulators. But Europe is too massive a market for Apple to permanently offer a degraded, second-rate product.

My prediction is that Apple will eventually be forced to cave, but it won’t be quick. They will likely spend the rest of 2026 licking their wounds from their recent court defeat. Only then will they quietly begin engineering the secure proxy APIs they should have built in the first place. We likely won’t see the new Siri experience unlocked in the EU until a major point-update like iOS 27.5, or alongside iOS 28 in mid-to-late 2027.

Time to Exit the Walled Garden

This entire saga is a masterclass in corporate disrespect. I paid an incredible premium to enter this ecosystem, expecting a company that delivers on its promises. Instead, I was handed an artificially crippled device, caught in the crossfire of a political standoff that Apple manufactured by refusing to innovate within the law.

As a tech enthusiast who just wanted to experience their take on the future of computing, they have devastatingly failed me. I refuse to hold onto devices that treat me like a second-class consumer while a four-year-old Samsung phone handles modern AI workflows with ease.

I am officially done waiting. It is time to offload my Apple devices on the secondary market, liquidate the Apple stock in my portfolio, and return to an ecosystem that actually functions, respects its users, and innovates without holding its customers hostage.

I presented our paper Conformity and Trust in Multi-Party vs. Individual Human-Robot Interaction at the Trust session on Wednesday, September 18th.

Doctoral Consortium

I presented my Ph.D. studies on Innovative Language Learning Using AI and Robot Environment at the Doctoral Consortium on Sunday, September 15th.

Interactive Poster

Doctoral Consortium — IVA 2024 by Alireza M. Kamelabad

The acquisition of Twitter by Elon Musk, and the subsequent rebranding to X, marks a significant shift in how the platform is governed and utilized. While I recognize that capitalism allows for such moves, I firmly believe that platforms that have become essential tools for communication in our society should not be subject to the whims of a single individual or a small group. The actions taken by Musk—limiting freedom of speech, reinstating controversial figures, and manipulating algorithms to serve personal interests—are deeply troubling and contrary to the values of open and fair communication.

I signed up for Twitter, not X, and I do not agree with the new terms and conditions imposed by this transformation. While I acknowledge that this decision comes later than perhaps it should have, I am closing my Twitter account today in protest of these changes.

For those who wish to stay in touch, you can find alternative ways to connect with me through the contact details available on my website. I look forward to continuing our conversations on platforms that respect the diversity of thought and the integrity of open communication.

That instinct is misplaced. The noise isn’t a lapse in manners — it has a name, 热闹 (rènao, literally “hot and noisy”), and in Chinese social life it isn’t the exception to a good meal. It’s closer to the definition of one.

Rènao: the case for a loud table

Rènao is one of those words that resists a clean English translation, built from 热 (hot) and 闹 (noisy, bustling). Marketing researchers who set out to pin it down found it clusters around a specific set of associations — crowds, food, noise, and a sense of occasion — that Chinese consumers consistently link to a successful social space.¹ A restaurant that’s dead silent isn’t calm, in this reading; it’s failing. A wedding banquet, a hotpot dinner where six people are talking over each other, a market at dusk — these are rènao, and rènao is good. It’s the same logic behind the firecrackers and gongs at Lunar New Year: noise announces that something worth celebrating is happening, and it’s meant to be heard.

Slurping and burping sit inside that framework. They’re not purely about the food-appreciation angle the internet loves to repeat, though that’s part of it — they’re evidence that you’ve relaxed into the room. Eating in total silence at a family dinner reads less like discipline and more like distance.

The actual physics of a slurp

Lanzhou beef noodle soup — the kind of bowl slurping was made for.

There’s also a mechanical reason the sound happens at all, and it’s the same one across the noodle-eating world. Pulling broth and noodles in fast draws a rush of air in alongside them, which does two things at once: it cools food that’s often served close to boiling, and it aerosolizes the broth’s aromatic compounds, forcing them up the back of the throat toward the olfactory receptors behind the nose. That pathway is called retronasal olfaction, and it’s most of what “flavor” means once you get past the five basic tastes. A 2021 study in Frontiers in Nutrition found that more vigorous, more numerous chewing strokes measurably increase the concentration of aroma compounds reaching the nose — more forceful eating quite literally tastes like more.²

Japan’s soba shops arrived at the same mechanism from the opposite direction. Soba culture took shape in Edo-period Tokyo, where buckwheat noodles were cheap, fast food sold from street stalls to laborers eating standing up — no time and no occasion for the formality of a sit-down meal. Slurping (susuru) caught on partly because cold soba’s aroma is faint, and drawing it in fast with a rush of air is close to the only way to taste it at all; one Tokyo soba-shop owner has compared the technique directly to how a sommelier aerates wine.³ It’s a strikingly similar physical trick to the Chinese case, arrived at from a completely different direction — Japan’s noodle noise grew out of the practical demands of cheap street food, China’s grew out of a broader value placed on a lively table. The sound is the same. The reason for it isn’t.

What the old rules actually said

This is the part the “ancient Chinese tradition” version of this story usually skips: the classical texts most associated with Chinese dining ritual don’t endorse noise. They endorse the opposite.

The Analects record Confucius eating in careful, deliberate quiet: “When eating, he did not converse. When in bed, he did not speak.”⁴ It’s not a throwaway line, either — a South China Morning Post columnist recently traced her own family’s mealtime silence straight back to it, describing a childhood where talking at dinner simply wasn’t done, on the belief (also drawn from traditional Chinese medicine) that conversation, and even too much liquid, worked against digestion.⁵ The Book of Rites (Liji), one of the Five Classics compiled from Zhou-dynasty material, goes further, devoting whole passages to the correct choreography of a banquet: who sits facing the door, who tastes the food first, how dishes are apportioned down the table.⁶ Anthropologist Eugene Cooper’s field account of contemporary Chinese table manners makes the same argument from the other end — much of what happens at a Chinese table, he writes, is a system for communicating rank and relationship, dressed up as generosity: who serves whom, who eats first, who gets the best piece.⁷ None of that is loud. It’s closer to choreography than celebration.

Even now, etiquette guides written for a Chinese audience keep both halves of this alive without much apparent friction. A list of core table manners circulated by the World Federation of Chinese Catering Industry puts “the eldest tastes first” right next to “keep quiet while eating, per Confucius” — two rules from the same code, neither one about slurping.⁸

So the honest version of this story runs on two registers, not one continuous “ancient tradition of joyful noise.” A formal register — quiet, hierarchical, closely watched — inherited from ritual texts over two thousand years old. And a separate, more vernacular register, rènao, that prizes exactly the opposite: noise, crowding, a table so alive it spills over. Slurping your soup lives entirely in the second register. Do it in front of the wrong people at the wrong table and you’ll get a very different reaction than you will halfway through a hotpot with friends.

Same country, different room

That’s really the throughline: how much noise is welcome depends far more on the room than the country. A business banquet in Beijing runs on the formal register — assigned seating built around seniority, a fixed order for toasts, a junior colleague angling their glass slightly lower than a senior’s when clinking, as a small, wordless sign of deference.⁹ A hotpot dinner with friends in Chengdu runs on rènao, and nobody there is quietly monitoring anyone’s noodle technique.

Journalist Luisa Tam put the personal version of this well, in a column defending her own eating habits abroad. She’ll adjust plenty about how she eats when she travels, she wrote — but she wasn’t going to sit through a bowl of noodles in dignified silence and pretend she wasn’t enjoying them. After warning her French hosts what was coming, she “slurped through it unashamedly” until the bowl was empty, and came away, in her words, feeling liberated.¹⁰

Burping gets folded into the same story constantly — you’ll find it stated flatly, across a hundred travel guides, that a burp is a compliment to the chef in China. Treat that one with a bit more caution than the slurping claim. It’s real enough as a piece of folk belief and older etiquette, repeated in guide after guide for decades,¹¹ but it’s also one of the first things to have softened with a generation raised on international travel and Western dining norms — particularly in cities, and particularly at anything resembling a formal meal. It hasn’t disappeared. It’s just no longer quite the safe bet the internet makes it out to be.

Conclusion

None of this makes the popular version of the story wrong, exactly. Slurping really is fine, often genuinely appreciated, and physically tied to how the food actually tastes. It just isn’t a straight line back to some unbroken ancient custom of joyful eating noise — it’s closer to a compromise Chinese dining culture has always negotiated between two real, competing instincts: the old ritual insistence on order and restraint, and a newer, equally strong sense that a good table should sound like one. Next time you’re at a meal that’s properly rènao — loud, crowded, dish after dish still arriving — slurp with a clear conscience. Just read the room first.

Photo credits: cover photo by Ctny (CC BY-SA 3.0); noodle-soup photo by Berthe (CC BY 3.0), both via Wikimedia Commons.

The second dog is a yoked control — literally “yoked,” harnessed to the first dog’s behavior the way a pair of oxen shares a crossbar. It’s one of the more elegant tricks in experimental design, and, it turns out, one of the more contested. Working through why it works, and where it breaks, is a useful lesson in experimental design generally.

What “yoked” actually buys you

A garden-variety control group just goes without the treatment. That’s not good enough here, because the thing being tested — whether an animal has control over an outcome — can’t be separated from the outcome itself by simply withholding it. If you gave the control dog no shocks at all, and it later behaved differently from the shocked dog, you’d have shown that shock does something, which nobody doubted. You wouldn’t know whether it was the shock or the helplessness driving the later passivity.

Yoking solves this by giving the control subject the exact same physical stimulus, on the exact same schedule, as its paired partner — the only thing that differs is whether the subject’s own behavior had any say in it. The full version of this logic is usually run as a three-way (triadic) comparison: an escapable-shock group, a yoked inescapable-shock group, and a no-shock group as a baseline.

flowchart TB
    classDef escapable fill:#166E5A,stroke:#166E5A,color:#fff
    classDef yoked fill:#D14E24,stroke:#D14E24,color:#fff
    classDef baseline fill:#5b5b5b,stroke:#5b5b5b,color:#fff

    A["Escapable group<br/>presses panel → shock ends"] -->|"shock onset & offset<br/>copied in real time"| B["Yoked group<br/>identical shock, no working panel"]
    C["No-shock group<br/>never shocked at all"]

    class A escapable
    class B yoked
    class C baseline

Fig. 1 — the triadic design: two groups get physically identical shocks and differ only in who controls them; the third gets none, as a baseline.

Because the escapable and yoked groups receive physically identical treatment, any difference between them afterward can’t be attributed to the shock itself — only to whether the shock was contingent on the animal’s own behavior. That’s the whole trick.

The original case: learned helplessness

That dog experiment is Martin Seligman and Steven Maier’s 1967 study, and it’s the paper that introduced the term “learned helplessness.”¹ Dogs that could press a panel to end shock later learned to escape shock in a new apparatus without trouble. Dogs yoked to them — same shocks, no working panel — later just lay down and took it, even once escape became trivially available. Seligman and Maier’s original account was that the yoked dogs had learned that nothing they did mattered, and that this learning suppressed the motivation to try.

That account held for about fifty years, and then Maier and Seligman revisited it themselves in a 2016 retrospective — and reversed the central mechanism.² Passivity, they now argue, is the default, unlearned response to a prolonged aversive event, driven by serotonin activity in the dorsal raphe nucleus. What the escapable-shock dogs had wasn’t a passivity they avoided learning — it was an active, learned inhibition of that default passivity, generated by the ventromedial prefrontal cortex the moment it detects that outcomes are controllable. In their words, “there is nothing in the brain that is selectively turned on by a lack of control, only something that turns things off when there is the presence of control.” The yoked design was never in question — it’s still exactly how you’d isolate this effect — but what it was shown to be isolating changed. The paper also notes that inescapable shock reproduces eight of the nine DSM diagnostic symptoms of depression, which is part of why the paradigm became a standard animal model in depression research.

The logic travels: ulcers, without any learning at all

The same yoked structure produces a strikingly similar result outside the realm of learning and memory altogether. In a 1968 study, Joseph Weiss ran rats through a comparable pairing: one rat could avoid or shorten shock with a coping response, its yoked partner received identical shock on an identical schedule with no working response, and a third rat got no shock. The yoked “helpless” rats developed substantially more gastric ulceration than their paired counterparts — despite receiving, again, the exact same physical stressor.³ The result argues that it’s the psychological experience of control, not the raw quantity of aversive stimulation, driving the physiological damage. Weiss also turned up a wrinkle worth keeping in mind: within the coping group, rats that made more responses developed more ulceration, not less — a reminder that “having control” and “exercising it a lot” aren’t the same variable, and a yoked design only cleanly isolates the one it was built to isolate.

Not just shocks, and not just animals

Nothing about the yoked logic requires an aversive stimulus, and the design shows up well outside the shock literature. Developmental psychologists studying infant learning use a gentler version of exactly the same structure: a ribbon ties a 2–3-month-old infant’s ankle to a mobile overhead, so kicking makes the mobile move. The infant’s kick rate roughly triples within minutes as they learn the contingency. In the yoked control condition, a different infant’s mobile moves on the same schedule as their paired partner’s — same visual stimulation, same timing, no contingency — and yoked infants show none of the learning.⁴ It’s the same experimental question — does behavior producing an effect matter, independent of the effect itself — asked with a toy instead of a shock panel.

The design hasn’t dated, either. A 2020 human study built a “translational” version of the original triadic design to study uncontrollable stress in people directly: an escapable-stress group, a yoked group receiving identical stress with the escape response disabled, and a no-stress control, used to study how perceived controllability shapes stress and depression risk in humans.⁵

The catch hiding inside the design

Here’s where the story gets less tidy. In 1964, Robert Church published a statistical objection to the yoked control design that experimental psychologists have been arguing about ever since.⁶ The yoked subject’s data isn’t statistically independent of its partner’s — by construction, the yoked animal’s entire stimulus schedule is a copy of whatever the master animal happened to do. If the master animals differ from each other for reasons that have nothing to do with the manipulation — one is just more anxious, or more active, or reacts more strongly to shock — that individual variation gets transmitted wholesale into the yoked animal’s environment. Church showed that this correlated-error structure can produce apparent group differences at a rate well above chance even when there’s no real effect of controllability at all — the design can manufacture “significant” results out of nothing but between-subject noise in the master group.

A follow-up paper by Kimmel and Terrant in 1968 took the critique seriously enough to propose a fix: a reciprocal yoked design, where each pair of subjects serves as both master and yoked partner across two different conditioned stimuli, so any individual bias one animal contributes gets balanced out rather than one-directional.⁷ It’s a partial patch, not a full solution — and it’s telling that, decades on, methods papers are still finding new bias sources in yoked comparisons.

So does it still hold up?

Mostly, yes — with a caveat about how much weight any single yoked comparison should carry. Church’s objection doesn’t mean learned helplessness, or Weiss’s ulcer result, are statistical artifacts; both have been replicated many times, across labs, strains, and eventually species, including the 2016 mechanistic account that traced the effect down to specific brain circuitry. But it does mean a lone yoked-pair comparison is weaker evidence on its own than it looks. What holds up is the pattern that keeps showing up when a yoked design is cross-checked against something else — a different paradigm, a different species, a molecular mechanism, a human neuroimaging study — rather than any single experiment in isolation.

That’s really the design’s legacy: not a flawless tool, but a genuinely clever one, honest enough about its own weak spot that the field has spent sixty years arguing about it in public. Next time you read that some group of animals, or infants, or people “had no control” in an experiment, it’s worth asking who they were yoked to — and what that pairing might be quietly carrying along with it.

Photo: an operant-conditioning (“Skinner box”) chamber set up for a pigeon-conditioning demonstration, Universidad Nacional Mayor de San Marcos, 1998 — the general class of apparatus behind the classic lever/panel-press experiments described above. Photo by Dtarazona, public domain, via Wikimedia Commons.

Your are most probably writing your thesis in LaTeX, on overleaf. I comment your thesis in three different ways:

Specific Comments

I use Overleaf’s review feature to add comments about a specific instance when there is something at the spot that is not clear to me. You need to either answer the comment, or modify the text to reflect the comment in a way that resolves the matter I have pointed out in the comment. You can reply the comment if it is not clear to you. If you are sure about your change and think that it is resolved, then you can choose “Resolve” option under the comment to close it.

General Comments and Suggestions

There might be systematic suggestions that would have several instances in your writing. For example specific grammatical mistake that you have repeated. Or a comment about your referencing style. For such matters, I comment on the first few instances that I see and after that I will use the todonotes package of LaTeX to add a comment in the margin or inline. I probably also create a list of todos somewhere at the beginning of the document. When you are done resolving them, you can put a comment on it using overleaf’s commenting system, or if you have questions about it, you can ask.

You do not need to delete these \todo commands from your document. If they are resolved simply use \usepackage[disable]{todonotes} at the preamble of your LaTeX document to disable them in your final version.

Useful LaTeX Package: Check out todonotes package. I find it very useful in many cases.

Corrections

Sometimes I might find a mistake in your thesis that needs to be corrected and it does not require your attention. I will correct it directly in the document. For such matters I use “track changes” option of Overleaf. You can see the changes I have made and accept or reject them. If you have questions about the change, you can ask me.

Common Mistakes

There are a few common mistakes that I have encountered master students make. I think it is a good idea to list them here so that you can avoid them before starting to write your thesis.

Use of Informal Language

Your thesis is a formal academic document. You should avoid using informal or casual language in your thesis. This includes contractions, slang, and colloquial expressions. A common informal structure is the use of short forms like “don’t”, “can’t”, “won’t”, etc. You should use the full form of these words in your thesis. Examples:

Use Acurate, Precise, and Unambiguous Language

Be careful with the use of adjectives and adverbs when writing an academic piece. Lots of adjectives and adverbs imply subjective interpretation and their measure differ from person to person. They are incalculable, unquantifiable, and immeasurable. Therefore, they can distort the actual message you want to convey. For example:

The results show a significantly better learning outcome of the participants in group A compared to group B (what is significantly better? How much better?).

The results show a $10%$ increase in the word retention of the participants in group A compared to group B (this is a quantifiable measure).

A more conceptual example of how adjectives can differ in meaning is:

• I am “very happy” to announce that we have a new colleague in our team.
• I am “very happy” that I won the lottery of $5 million.

In the two sentences above, both are very happy, but one is much happier than the other. Also, in the second one, me thinking about it might imagine a person crying from happiness for winning the money, while you might imagine a person jumping around. Now can you say whether the happiness I am imagining that person has is the same amount of happiness you are imagining for her? Maybe my very happy is happier than your very happy. That is why, using such terms in scientific writing is dangerous:

The fail-safe system of the seat eject mechanism is “extremely reliable”. For this aircraft it “almost never” fails.

Now I am sitting at the corner thinking ok, I guess “extremely reliable” means like 99.9999% reliable which makes me happy to use their system. Also, I would say “almost never” when it is a one in a million chance. Now imagine the author of this sentence is a person who is very optimistic and always sees the glass half full. He might say “extremely reliable” when it is 95% reliable and “almost never” when it is 1 in 100. Now I am not happy to use their system. I hope you get the gist of it.

First Person Pronoun

In almost all the cases, the master thesis is done by a single person (you). You do the practical part and also the writing. You are the sole author and beneficiary of the thesis. Therefore, when you need to use a pronoun to refer to the author, you should use the first person singular pronoun “I”. It is true that I might help you with some stages in your thesis, but I am your supervisor and it is my job to do so. Therefore I should not be credited in your thesis as an author. :)

Balance Passive and Active Voice

Conventionally, there is a preference for the passive voice in academic writing. However, the passive voice can make your writing unclear and difficult to read. Therefore, my personal preference is to use the active voice whenever possible. The active voice is more direct and concise. It is also more engaging and easier to read. Examples:

However, there are cases where the passive voice is more appropriate. For example, when the focus is on the action rather than the actor. Examples:

• It is widely believed that…
• The results show that…
• It has been shown that…
• The data suggest that…

Use of Abbreviations

When you introduce an abbreviation, you should first write the full form of the abbreviation followed by the abbreviation in parentheses. After that, you can use the abbreviation in the rest of the document. For example:

Useful LaTeX Packages: acronym and glossaries

Back up your claims! Either by reference or by proof (data)

When you make a claim in your thesis, you should back it up with evidence. This evidence can be a reference to a scientific paper, a book, or a reliable website. It can also be data that you have collected or analyzed. If you make a claim or a statement without evidence, it is considered an opinion. Opinions are not valid in academic writing. You should always back up your claims with evidence. Example:

Claim by Opinion : Electric cars are better for the environment than gasoline cars. (it sounds obvious, but without experimentation or data, it is just an opinion. Which means I can claim otherwise and you cannot do anything about it. :D)

Evidence : Electric cars produce CO2 emissions only during their production phase. After that, they are emission-free. Gasoline cars produce CO2 emissions throughout their lifetime (Smith, 2020). (In order to oppose this statement, now I need to at least provide counter-evidence or find a problem in the analysis or the quality of Smith’s study.)

Consistent Referencing Style

You should use a consistent referencing style throughout your thesis. You can use any referencing style you like, or the one that the university is suggesting. However, you should use it consistently. If you are using a reference management software like Zotero (my prefered option), Mendeley, or EndNote you can easily change the style of your references.

You can also connect Zotero and Mendelely to your Overleaf account to use the references directly in your LaTeX document.

Placement of the References

People place the citations at different parts of the sentences and it is a bit of a personal writing style. I have two personal preferences depending on whether the citation is “numbered” or “named”.

Numbered

In numbered citations I prefer to place the citation at the end of the sentence. For example:

• Language is unique to humans [1].
• Computers can understand human language [2].
• The field of natural language processing is growing rapidly [3].

Named

I prefer placing the citation where a statement is made. For example:

• According to (Smith, 2020), language is unique to humans.
• Computers can understand human language (Jones, 2019).
• Doe (2018) showed that the field of natural language processing is growing rapidly.

These examples are not the only way to place the citations. You can choose your own style. However, you should be consistent in your choice.

Own your work

In my view, there is no problem in using assistive technologies (LLMs like ChatGPT and many others) for writing your thesis or analyzing your data, statistics, interpretations, or learning, and I even encourage you using them. However, after using such tools you should be able to judge the outcome. If the systems made outputs that included any sort of statement, you need to fact check them. Especially when it is used for content creation, you should have a complete understanding of the system’s output and it should not contain pieces that you do not understand or cannot explain. If you cannot explain a part of your thesis, it is a sign that you should not include it in your thesis.

Being my student, I ask you to include a comment in the LaTeX document of your thesis, where you use such tools, to indicate that you have used them. Examples:

% GPT-4o (grammar correction)
Today's Russian language has a limited number of accents due to the influence of the Soviet Union (Gorbachev, 1985). This has made the language easier to learn and understand for non-native speakers who wish to use within countries who use russian as one of their main languages.

I collected data from $60$ participants. 
% GPT-5 (Choice of statistical model)
I conducted a linear regression analysis to find the relationship between the age of the participants and their performance in learning verb forms in Amharic. The results for the regression analysis showed that the age of the participants is a significant predictor of their performance in learning verb forms in Amharic ($\beta = 0.45$, $p < 0.001$).
% Gemini Pro 1.5 (Interpretation of the results)
This result suggests that the older the participants are, the better they are in learning verb forms in Amharic. This is in line with the previous studies that showed that the age of the participants is a significant predictor of their performance in learning verb forms in Amharic.

In this post, we will focus on the public-key authentication method, which is more secure and convenient than using passwords. We will explain what SSH keys are, how they work, and how to create and use them on different operating systems, such as Windows 11, MacOS, and Ubuntu.

What are SSH keys?

SSH keys are two long strings of characters that are used to verify the identity of a user who wants to access a remote server. These keys are generated by the user on their local machine using a SSH utility. One key is private and stored on the user’s local machine. The other key is public and shared with the remote server or any other entity the user wishes to securely communicate with.

The private key is like a secret password that should never be revealed to anyone. The public key is like a lock that can be opened only by the matching private key. When the user tries to connect to the remote server, the server will check if the user has the correct private key that matches the public key stored on the server. If the keys match, the user is granted access. If not, the connection is denied.

SSH keys provide several advantages over passwords:

• They are more secure, as they are harder to guess or crack by brute force attacks.
• They are more convenient, as they do not require the user to remember or type a password every time they connect to the server.
• They can be used to automate tasks, such as running scripts or deploying applications, without human intervention.

How to create SSH keys?

To create SSH keys, you need to use a SSH utility that is available on your operating system. There are different tools and commands for different operating systems, but the basic steps are similar:

• Run a command to generate a pair of SSH keys, usually a 3072-bit or 4096-bit RSA key pair. You can optionally add a passphrase to further protect your private key.
• Save the keys in a secure location on your local machine, usually in a hidden folder named .ssh in your home directory. The private key will have no file extension, while the public key will have a .pub extension.
• Copy the public key to the remote server or any other entity you want to communicate with. You can use a utility called ssh-copy-id or manually append the public key to a file named authorized_keys in the .ssh folder on the remote server.

In the following sections, we will show you how to create SSH keys on Windows 11, MacOS, and Ubuntu, using different tools and commands.

Windows 11

Windows 11 comes with a built-in OpenSSH client that you can use to generate SSH keys. To use it, open the Windows Terminal or the Command Prompt and follow these steps:

• Type the following command to generate a pair of SSH keys and press Enter:

ssh-keygen -t rsa -b 4096 -C "your_email@example.com"

This will create a 4096-bit RSA key pair with your email address as a comment.

• You will be prompted to specify the file name and location for the keys. Press Enter to accept the default location, which is C:\Users\yourusername\.ssh\id_rsa for the private key and C:\Users\yourusername\.ssh\id_rsa.pub for the public key.

Enter file in which to save the key (C:\Users\yourusername/.ssh/id_rsa):

• You will be asked to enter a passphrase for the keys. This is optional, but recommended for extra security. Type a secure passphrase and press Enter. You will need to enter the same passphrase again to confirm it.

Enter passphrase (empty for no passphrase):
Enter same passphrase again:

• You will see a message that your keys have been generated, along with a fingerprint and a randomart image.

Your identification has been saved in C:\Users\yourusername/.ssh/id_rsa
Your public key has been saved in C:\Users\yourusername/.ssh/id_rsa.pub
The key fingerprint is:
SHA256:xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx your_email@example.com
The key's randomart image is:
+---[RSA 4096]----+
|                 |
|                 |
|                 |
|                 |
|                 |
|                 |
|                 |
|                 |
|                 |
+----[SHA256]-----+

• To copy the public key to the remote server, you can use the ssh-copy-id utility. Type the following command, replacing remote_username and server_ip_address with the username and IP address of the remote server. You will be prompted to enter the password of the remote user.

ssh-copy-id remote_username@server_ip_address

• Alternatively, you can manually copy the public key to the remote server. To do that, you need to open the public key file with a text editor, such as Notepad, and copy its contents. Then, you need to log in to the remote server using SSH, create a .ssh folder in your home directory if it does not exist, and append the public key to a file named authorized_keys in the .ssh folder. You can use the following commands to do that:

ssh remote_username@server_ip_address
mkdir -p ~/.ssh
echo 'paste_your_public_key_here' >> ~/.ssh/authorized_keys

MacOS

MacOS comes with a SSH utility called OpenSSH that you can use to generate SSH keys. To use it, open the Terminal application and follow these steps:

• Type the following command to generate a pair of SSH keys and press Enter:

ssh-keygen -t rsa -b 4096 -C "your_email@example.com"

This will create a 4096-bit RSA key pair with your email address as a comment.

• You will be prompted to specify the file name and location for the keys. Press Enter to accept the default location, which is /Users/yourusername/.ssh/id_rsa for the private key and /Users/yourusername/.ssh/id_rsa.pub for the public key.

Enter file in which to save the key (/Users/yourusername/.ssh/id_rsa):

• You will be asked to enter a passphrase for the keys. This is optional, but recommended for extra security. Type a secure passphrase and press Enter. You will need to enter the same passphrase again to confirm it.

Enter passphrase (empty for no passphrase):
Enter same passphrase again:

• You will see a message that your keys have been generated, along with a fingerprint and a randomart image.

Your identification has been saved in /Users/yourusername/.ssh/id_rsa
Your public key has been saved in /Users/yourusername/.ssh/id_rsa.pub
The key fingerprint is:
SHA256:xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx your_email@example.com
The key's randomart image is:
+---[RSA 4096]----+
|                 |
|                 |
|                 |
|                 |
|                 |
|                 |
|                 |
|                 |
|                 |
+----[SHA256]-----+

• To copy the public key to the remote server, you can use the ssh-copy-id utility. Type the following command, replacing remote_username and server_ip_address with the username and IP address of the remote server. You will be prompted to enter the password of the remote user.

ssh-copy-id remote_username@server_ip_address

• Alternatively, you can manually copy the public key to the remote server. To do that, you need to open the public key file with a text editor, such as TextEdit, and copy its contents. Then, you need to log in to the remote server using SSH, create a .ssh folder in your home directory if it does not exist, and append the public key to a file named authorized_keys in the .ssh folder. You can use the following commands to do that:

ssh remote_username@server_ip_address
mkdir -p ~/.ssh
echo 'paste_your_public_key_here' >> ~/.ssh/authorized_keys

Ubuntu

Ubuntu comes with a SSH utility called OpenSSH that you can use to generate SSH keys. To use it, open the Terminal application and follow these steps:

• Type the following command to generate a pair of SSH keys and press Enter:

ssh-keygen -t rsa -b 4096 -C "your_email@example.com"

This will create a 4096-bit RSA key pair with your email address as a comment.

• You will be prompted to specify the file name and location for the keys. Press Enter to accept the default location, which is /home/yourusername/.ssh/id_rsa for the private key and /home/yourusername/.ssh/id_rsa.pub for the public key.

Enter file in which to save the key (/home/yourusername/.ssh/id_rsa):

• You will be asked to enter a passphrase for the keys. This is optional, but recommended for extra security. Type a secure passphrase and press Enter. You will need to enter the same passphrase again to confirm it.

Enter passphrase (empty for no passphrase):
Enter same passphrase again:

• You will see a message that your keys have been generated, along with a fingerprint and a randomart image.

Your identification has been saved in /home/yourusername/.ssh/id_rsa

OK, I will continue generating the blog post.

• You will see a message that your keys have been generated, along with a fingerprint and a randomart image.

Your identification has been saved in /home/yourusername/.ssh/id_rsa
Your public key has been saved in /home/yourusername/.ssh/id_rsa.pub
The key fingerprint is:
SHA256:xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx your_email@example.com
The key's randomart image is:
+---[RSA 4096]----+
|                 |
|                 |
|                 |
|                 |
|                 |
|                 |
|                 |
|                 |
|                 |
+----[SHA256]-----+

• To copy the public key to the remote server, you can use the ssh-copy-id utility. Type the following command, replacing remote_username and server_ip_address with the username and IP address of the remote server. You will be prompted to enter the password of the remote user.

ssh-copy-id remote_username@server_ip_address

• Alternatively, you can manually copy the public key to the remote server. To do that, you need to open the public key file with a text editor, such as Gedit, and copy its contents. Then, you need to log in to the remote server using SSH, create a .ssh folder in your home directory if it does not exist, and append the public key to a file named authorized_keys in the .ssh folder. You can use the following commands to do that:

ssh remote_username@server_ip_address
mkdir -p ~/.ssh
echo 'paste_your_public_key_here' >> ~/.ssh/authorized_keys

How to use SSH keys?

Once you have created and copied your SSH keys, you can use them to connect to the remote server without entering a password. To do that, you need to use the ssh command with the -i option to specify the path to your private key. For example, to connect to the remote server using the private key stored in the default location, you can use the following command:

ssh -i ~/.ssh/id_rsa remote_username@server_ip_address

If you have added a passphrase to your private key, you will be asked to enter it once per session. If you want to avoid typing the passphrase every time, you can use a utility called ssh-agent to store the passphrase in memory. To do that, you need to run the following commands:

eval $(ssh-agent)
ssh-add ~/.ssh/id_rsa

You will be prompted to enter the passphrase once, and then it will be cached by the ssh-agent. You can then connect to the remote server using the ssh command without entering the passphrase again.

Conclusion

In this post, we have learned what SSH and SSH keys are, how they work, and how to create and use them on different operating systems. SSH keys are a secure and convenient way to access and communicate with remote servers over the internet. We hope you have found this post useful and informative. If you have any questions or feedback, please leave a comment below. Thank you for reading! 😊

Communication

Slack

I preffer to use Slack for work communication. I need to invite you to my workspace using Slack Connect. I will let you know about it.

Materials

User Interfance/Experience (UI/UX) Design

Go through this part if your project includes a user interface design. If not, skip to the next section.

Prototyping

Figma (Recommended)

1. Create an account on Figma
2. Register for Figma Education using your KTH email

Version Control

Needless to say that we will need a version control for our programming materials

GitHub

1. Create an account on GitHub if you do not have one already
2. Register for GitHub Education and get verified as a student so that you can access the premium features for free and so many other benefits that I encourage you to use, such as GitHub Copilot
3. Activate your GitHub Copilot
4. Create a private repository for your degree project/thesis and add me as a collaborator using my GitHub username @horotat

Open Science Framework (OSF)

A healthy research ethics means not to be worried about sharing your work with others. If we are honest in all what we do, then we sholdn’t worry about sharing the details of our analsys, data, and methods with others. An open science attitude is a good way to give the other researchers the opportunity to reproduce your work and build on it. OSF is a platform that facilitates this process. If you are going to work on a scientific project with me, I recommend you to:

1. Create an account on OSF
2. Create a project for your degree project/thesis
3. Add me as a contributor using my KTH email
4. Keep the repository private for the time being
5. In our first meeting we will put the proposal on the OSF repo and build on top of that

Time Management

I am not strict about your preferred way of time management, but it is important that you have a framework and we follow up with the agreed method. You need to take care of the time management yourself but present your plan and updates, each time we meet. You can as well just use Slack Canvas or written text. But if you want some flaivour, here are some recommendations of the systems that I personally have used and liked:

• (Recommended) Notion(With free student subscription).
• (Recommended) Microsoft To Do
• Other platforms:
  • ClickUp
  • Trello
  • Todoist
  • Google Tasks

Literature

Search & Review

During your project with me, you will learn about how to search for literature and find relevant studies to shape your project in a proper academic way. We will discuss the techniques all together but before hand you can familiarize yourself with the following platforms:

If you are KTH student, review the KTH Library information about Literature search.

Here is a list of platforms to use for literature search and review:

• Search
  • Google Scholar
  • Scopus
  • Web of Science
• Evaluate
  • Elicit
  • Scite

Reference Management

You will need a way to keep track of the references and literature that you find so that later you can easily cite them. There are some softwares that can do that. You can find information about many of them on this page of KTH Library. My preffered software is Zotero.

Zotero

1. Install Zotero on your computer and browser
2. Create an account on Zotero
3. Create a group for your degree project/thesis, and add me as a member using my KTH email

Writing

LaTeX, on Overleaf

I recommend you to use LaTeX for writing your thesis and personally I am most comfortable with LaTeX for collaboration and commenting on your writings. For this purpose follow these steps:

1. Go to Overleaf. Sign in with your KTH account (SSO)
2. Create a project and add me as a collaborator using my KTH email
3. Go to the setting of your profile and connect your Overleaf account to your GitHub and Zotero accounts (included in the Overleaf premium with your KTH account)

Overleaf is pretty straight forward, but if you do not know LaTeX, the pages below provide very nice and quick tutorials:

• Learn LaTeX in 30 minutes: Quick option
• Learn LaTeX: More comprehensive option

Apart from these there is a ton of resources online. Just google it!

Facilities for My Students

As long as you work with me I could try to provide you with the following facilities:

Computational Resources

I can give you SSH access to my server for the duration of your project to exclusively be used for your processes. The server configuration is as follows:

| OS | Ubuntu 22.04 LTS | | CPU | Intel(R) Core(TM) i9-10850K @ 3.60GHz | | GPU | GeForce RTX 3090, 24GB | | RAM | DDR4 128GB | | Storage | 1TB SSD, 4TB HDD |

If you need heavy computation in your project send me your SSH public key, mentioning your needs and demands, and I will give you access to the server.

If you are not familiar with SSH, you can find a tutorial in this post.

Office Space and Access to TMH

If you need it, I can provide you with office space within TMH division. This is not promised and depends on the availability of the space.

To get access to TMH facilities, send me your Personal Number (Personnummer) (or birthdate if you do not have a Swedish personal number.).

Computer

Depending on what you need to do, I might be able to get you a laptop for the duration of your project. This is not promised and depends on the availability of the laptops.

ADHD in Sweden

In Sweden, Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder (ADHD) is recognized as a neurodevelopmental disorder and is diagnosed and treated within both the public healthcare system and the private healthcare sector. Sadly, the quality of care differs significantly between the two — private care is generally far better resourced than its public counterpart. The public healthcare system in Sweden is overwhelmed and heavily understaffed in terms of specialists, nurses, and therapists. This has led to long waiting times for diagnosis and treatment of ADHD, especially for adults.

In this post, I share general information about how to start getting help — whether you have already been diagnosed with ADHD or suspect you might have it. I also share my personal experience navigating the public healthcare system in Stockholm, including the challenges I have faced and some practical approaches that have worked for me.

In Swedish society, ADHD as a term is fairly well-known — but usually only at a surface level. People tend to have a general awareness of the broad symptoms, which can sometimes give those of us with ADHD the mistaken impression that others truly understand our day-to-day challenges. Unfortunately, that is rarely the case.

One of the most important early steps you can take is to educate your immediate manager, colleagues, friends, and family about ADHD — specifically, how it affects you, and how they can support you. This is especially valuable in the workplace, where difficulties with time management, organization, and communication are common. By creating that awareness around you, you can build a more supportive environment, avoid unnecessary conflicts, and reduce misunderstandings that are not your fault to begin with. Below, I have collected some of the best resources in both Swedish and English to help you do that.

Swedish ADHD Websites

• 1177.se – Adhd — Sweden’s official healthcare guide. Explains what ADHD is, symptoms, diagnosis criteria, and treatments (including medication). Written in plain, accessible Swedish. A great starting point for anyone with no prior background. 1177
• Hjärnfonden – Adhd hos barn & Adhd hos vuxna — The Brain Foundation of Sweden. Has separate, well-structured pages for ADHD in children and adults. Both were updated in May 2026, so the content is current. hjarnfonden
• Riksförbundet Attention (attention.se) — Sweden’s main interest organization for people with neuropsychiatric conditions (NPF), including ADHD. Aimed at people with ADHD, their families, and professionals. Also runs attentionung.se specifically for young people. funktionshindersguiden
• Vardochinsats.se – Adhd — National program for care and support. More detailed clinical information, updated December 2024, covering children, adolescents, and adults. Good if you want deeper reading. vardochinsats
• Kunskapsguiden.se – Adhd — Run by the Swedish National Board of Health and Welfare (Socialstyrelsen). Covers diagnosis, investigation, and treatment. Updated November 2025. More technical, but thorough. kunskapsguiden
• Habilitering.se – Adhd-center — Region Stockholm’s ADHD center. Offers practical tips for everyday life, particularly for families with children. habilitering
• Understood.org – ADHD Explained — An English-language resource from the US, but very accessible and well-structured. Covers all aspects of ADHD clearly. Best for a total beginner: Start with 1177.se for a clear overview, then Hjärnfonden for more depth.

On top of that, the best video I have ever seen explaining ADHD is a 30-minute talk by Dr. Brown, a clinical psychologist and ADHD expert. He explains ADHD in a simple, clear, and deeply human way — and helps people without ADHD understand the real challenges those of us with it face every day. I highly recommend sharing it with anyone you want to bring on board:

Recognition as a Disability

In Sweden, ADHD is recognized as a disability under the Swedish Discrimination Act (Diskrimineringslagen). This means that individuals with ADHD are protected from discrimination in employment, education, and access to public services.

This recognition matters in practice. In the workplace, employers are required to provide reasonable accommodations — such as flexible working hours or modified responsibilities. In education, students with ADHD may be entitled to special services or academic accommodations. Even for things like the driver’s license theory exam, people with ADHD are allowed extra time and other adjustments.

Overall, this legal framework helps ensure that individuals with ADHD have equal access to support and the opportunity to thrive in both their personal and professional lives.

ADHD Treatment in Sweden

To receive treatment for ADHD in Sweden, you need a diagnosis from a psychiatrist. In the public sector, there are specialized psychiatric centers for ADHD diagnosis and treatment, called ADHD-mottagning in Swedish. You can find a list of all ADHD-mottagningar at 1177.

Below is the general adult ADHD treatment pathway in Sweden:

flowchart TD
    A([🏥 Initial Contact\nPrimary care or specialist psychiatry])
    A --> B[📋 Initial Mapping\nFunctional & needs assessment]
    B --> C[🤝 Early Support\nCan start before diagnosis based on need]
    B --> D{🔍 Strong suspicion of ADHD\nand specialist assessment needed?}
 
    D -- No --> E([🔄 Continue support & follow-up\nat appropriate care level])
    D -- Yes --> F[🧠 Diagnostic Assessment\nSpecialist psychiatry — Utredning]
 
    F --> G{📁 Documented prior diagnosis\naccepted after specialist review?}
    G -- Yes --> H[📝 Individualized Treatment Plan\nwith assigned psychiatrist]
    G -- No --> I[⏳ Complete diagnostic process\nWaiting list if needed]
    I --> H
 
    H --> J([💊 Multimodal Treatment\nPsychoeducation · CBT / Group Therapy · OT · Medication when indicated])
 
    J --> K[📅 Weekly follow-ups\nDuring dose titration — after each dose increase\nBP & pulse · Effect & side effects · Adjust dose]
    K --> L[📅 Structured review at 3–6 months\nAfter stable dose reached\nBP · pulse · weight · ASRS · function · adherence]
    L --> M[📅 Follow-up every 6 months\nOngoing maintenance\nBP · pulse · weight · ASRS · symptoms · side effects]
    M --> N([📅 Annual physician review\nEvaluate continued treatment & cardiovascular status])
 
    style A fill:#c6d8e4,stroke:#006494,color:#1a1a1a
    style B fill:#f9f8f5,stroke:#dcd9d5,color:#1a1a1a
    style C fill:#f9f8f5,stroke:#dcd9d5,color:#1a1a1a
    style D fill:#fef9e7,stroke:#c07d0a,color:#1a1a1a
    style E fill:#f9f8f5,stroke:#dcd9d5,color:#1a1a1a
    style F fill:#c6d8e4,stroke:#006494,color:#1a1a1a
    style G fill:#fef9e7,stroke:#c07d0a,color:#1a1a1a
    style H fill:#cedcd8,stroke:#01696f,color:#1a1a1a
    style I fill:#e7d7c4,stroke:#da7101,color:#1a1a1a
    style J fill:#d4dfcc,stroke:#437a22,color:#1a1a1a
    style K fill:#d4dfcc,stroke:#437a22,color:#1a1a1a
    style L fill:#d4dfcc,stroke:#437a22,color:#1a1a1a
    style M fill:#d4dfcc,stroke:#437a22,color:#1a1a1a
    style N fill:#dacfde,stroke:#7a39bb,color:#1a1a1a

The Treatment Pathway — Step by Step

Here is what each stage of the flowchart actually involves in practice:

1. Initial Contact Your journey begins at a primary care center (Vårdcentral) or, in some cases, directly with specialist psychiatry. You describe your difficulties to a general practitioner (GP), who assesses whether a referral to a specialist is appropriate.

2. Initial Mapping and Needs Assessment The GP or referring professional carries out a brief mapping of your functional needs — understanding how your symptoms affect daily life, work, and relationships. Based on this, early support such as practical coping strategies or workplace adjustments can begin even before a formal diagnosis is established.

3. Decision Point: Specialist Assessment Needed? If there is a strong enough suspicion of ADHD and specialist-level evaluation is warranted, a referral (remiss) is issued to an ADHD clinic. If not, support continues at the primary care level with regular follow-up.

4. Diagnostic Assessment — Utredning At the specialist clinic, a thorough diagnostic process (utredning) is carried out by a psychiatrist. This typically includes structured clinical interviews, validated questionnaires (such as the ASRS), a review of your developmental history — and often, input from people who knew you in childhood, such as parents or teachers.

5. Prior Diagnosis?

• If you have a documented diagnosis from abroad, the specialist reviews and validates it. If accepted, you are assigned a psychiatrist and a personalized treatment plan can begin within weeks — you can largely skip the waiting list.
• If no prior diagnosis exists, you enter the full diagnostic process, which may involve a waiting list of several months to over a year depending on the clinic and region. 6. Individualized Treatment Plan Once diagnosed, you and your assigned psychiatrist co-create a treatment plan tailored to your specific profile, symptoms, and functional needs. This is your plan — bring your questions, your goals, and your history to this conversation.

7. Multimodal Treatment Treatment in Sweden is multimodal in principle, meaning it is intended to combine several approaches. In practice, access to the non-medication components varies significantly by region and clinic:

• Psychoeducation: Understanding how ADHD works and how it specifically affects you

• CBT and Group Therapy: Cognitive behavioural therapy or structured group sessions (where available — often only in Swedish)

• Occupational Therapy (OT): Practical strategies for day-to-day functioning, organization, and environment

• Medication: Stimulants (e.g., methylphenidate-based: Ritalin, Concerta, Medikinet, Equasym) or non-stimulants (e.g., atomoxetine / Strattera), when clinically indicated. The choice of medication and dosage is based on your individual symptoms, medical history, and response to treatment. 8. Follow-up Schedule Follow-up is structured and progressive. Think of it like calibrating a new instrument — the early checks are frequent, and they gradually space out as things stabilize:

• During dose titration: Short check-ins after each dose increase — monitoring blood pressure, pulse, perceived effect, and side effects, with dosage adjusted as needed

• At 3–6 months: A structured review once a stable dose is reached — covering blood pressure, pulse, weight, ASRS score, functional status, and medication adherence

• Every 6 months: Ongoing maintenance visits covering the same parameters, plus symptom trajectory and any emerging concerns

• Annual physician review: A comprehensive evaluation of whether continued treatment is appropriate and a full cardiovascular status check

ADHD Diagnosis

Many people have asked me about the procedure for getting an ADHD diagnosis as a resident of Sweden (Swedish citizens and legal residents with a personnummer and state healthcare coverage). I have tried to summarize the process clearly below, and I will keep this post updated as things change.

Currently, there is an overwhelming number of patients on waiting lists across Sweden awaiting their initial appointment for ADHD assessment. This is especially severe in larger cities (Stockholm, Göteborg, Malmö). Waiting times for the initial appointment can reach up to two years — a long time to wait when you have been struggling for much of your life. That said, I have also heard of people reaching the diagnosis stage in around two months recently, so the picture is uneven.

Below are the two most practical routes to getting diagnosed while living in Sweden as an independent adult.

Beware that for all the ways below, you need to have a personal number (personnummer) and BankID already active.

Diagnosis in Sweden

1. Get a Referral from General Practitioner for a Psychiatrist

First, you need to be registered with a primary care center (Vårdcentral). You can find the closest one by searching “Vårdcentral” in Google Maps, or asking friends or colleagues for recommendations. Personally, I recommend using Kry, which lets you book a video appointment with a GP quickly and without a physical visit.

When you meet the GP, be clear: tell them either that you have a prior ADHD diagnosis and wish to continue treatment in Sweden, or that you have been struggling with ADHD symptoms for a long time and would like to be assessed. Be specific about how your symptoms affect your daily life — this is what will support your referral.

2. Book Appointment with the Psychiatrist

The GP will refer you to an ADHD clinic in your region (ADHD-mottagning). In Swedish, this referral is called a remiss.

You can find a list of ADHD clinics here.

After the referral is sent, the clinic should contact you within a week. If they do not, follow up yourself — call them and mention your remiss. Depending on availability, they will set an appointment within up to three months. This first appointment is called the Utredning — the initial investigation for ADHD diagnosis.

Worth noting: some ADHD centers do not require a GP referral, and you can self-refer (egenremiss) directly. It is worth checking whether any clinic in your region offers this, as it can save time.

Read this page thoroughly before attending your first appointment: ADHD Utredning

3. Attend the Initial Appointment

Before you go, create a note on your phone listing everything that has been affecting you — the specific situations, the patterns you have noticed, and how long they have been part of your life. This is important: in the moment, it is easy to forget, minimize, or struggle to articulate what you live with every day. A written list keeps you grounded and ensures nothing gets left out.

At the utredning, the doctor (usually a psychiatrist) will listen to your challenges, have you fill in questionnaires about your symptoms, and try to build a picture of your difficulties. Based on their assessment, they will decide whether further investigation is needed. If it is, you may be placed on a waiting list — but if you already have a diagnosis from abroad, you can skip this entirely (see below).

4. The Routine Starts

After diagnosis, you enter a structured follow-up cycle with consecutive appointments. Use this time well — educate yourself about ADHD through reliable sources, and come to appointments with questions. Here is a resource I recommend as a starting point:

• Sweden: ADHD i Vuxen Ålder (in Swedish, translate using Google Translate)

Already Have a Diagnosis from Another Country?

If you already have a diagnosis from another country, you can skip the long waiting list and move directly into treatment in Sweden. At step 1, make sure to tell your GP about your prior diagnosis. When you attend your first appointment at the ADHD clinic, bring all your documentation. The psychiatrist will review and validate your prior diagnosis, and if accepted, a treatment plan can be established within weeks.

Danish Diagnosis (Shortcut)

Compared to Sweden, the waiting time for ADHD diagnosis in Denmark is dramatically shorter — in some cases, you can complete a full assessment in a fraction of the time. Getting diagnosed in Denmark and then continuing your treatment in Sweden is a legitimate and practical route for many people.

Practical information about how to do this will be updated here soon.

My Personal Experience

My experience is mainly from my contact with two ADHD centers where I have been treated for my ADHD in Stockholm: Aleris Psykiatri Spånga — which has since transitioned fully to private under WeMind — and my current clinic, Specialistpsykiatrisk mottagning 4, S:t Eriksplan. I have been treated exclusively under the public healthcare system.

At the time of writing, the public healthcare system in Sweden is overwhelmed and heavily understaffed across the board — specialists, nurses, psychologists, and occupational therapists alike. In practical terms, this means that what is described on paper as “multimodal treatment” often translates into medication-only care in the public sector. There is little to no access to psychotherapy, cognitive behavioural therapy, or individual psychological support. Group therapies exist in some clinics, but are available only in Swedish and are limited in number. The shortage of qualified professionals is acute, and it directly shapes the quality of care patients receive.

Challenges and Difficulties

I was first diagnosed with ADHD at age 12. I was re-diagnosed at 24 in Italy, during my master’s degree. My ADHD treatment journey in Sweden began in 2021, after moving to Stockholm. I was able to visit a psychiatrist relatively quickly by presenting my Italian diagnosis, and a treatment plan was established fairly promptly.

However, what became apparent over time was that the public sector ADHD services in Sweden are, in many ways, not adequately equipped to care for adults with ADHD. The level of expertise varies widely, and the field’s more recent developments — particularly around adult presentations of ADHD and evidence-based psychological interventions — are often not reflected in the care provided.

I have been requesting access to psychotherapy for five years. Every request has been declined, with the explanation that psychotherapy is not an officially recommended first-line treatment for ADHD in Sweden, and that psychotherapists are in critically short supply. While the former is debatable and the latter is undeniably true, the cumulative effect is a system that leaves many adults — particularly those with complex presentations or co-occurring conditions — without the full range of support they need.

This is not a criticism of the individual professionals I have worked with, many of whom are dedicated and competent within the constraints they face. It is a structural problem, and one worth naming clearly so that others navigating this system know what to expect.