Hospital is situated on Kungsholmen, a central part of Stockholm. The hospital houses one of the three Psychiatry Sections of the Karolinska Institutet. Hospital was the first one in Sweden to use lithium for treating affective disorders. The Lithium Dispensary started at the hospital developed later into today's Affective Center specializing in depression and manic disorders. Associate professor Bengt F. Kjellman is head of the Section since January 2001.
Research focuses to a large extent around diagnosis and treatment of affective disorders.
Both clinical and preclinical projects are being conducted. Factors influencing the onset, course and prognosis of illness are studied. Such investigations are possible due to the fact that a large cohort of patients with a long history of affective disorder has been treated at the Department for the past thirty years. Another series of studies is attempting to answer the question of behavioral and biochemical effects of changing the precursors to serotonin and noradrenaline in brain by changing the precursors in diet. An additional line of research is studying the offspring of patients with affective disorder and trying to find predictors for onset and development of affective disorders in such children.