One of Helsingin Sanomat's most-read articles on Tuesday morning features researcher Jaakko Vuori and his focus on a new category of people in Finland: the guilt-riddled melancholic class.
Vuori himself is one of them. He holds a doctorate in social sciences yet he is unemployed, and he is constantly gripped by feelings of anxiety, depression and failure. He wakes up in the middle of the night wondering if he has made the wrong choices in life or if he can ever make a living.
And he's not alone.
According to sociologists, many so-called 'knowledge workers' in Finland — people whose job is to "think for a living" — suffer the same symptoms of melancholy, a term which is often misunderstood.
"It refers to a type of depression characterised by feelings of guilt and remorse. This is precisely how the term melancholy began to be used in the early 20th century, and it is this type of depression I also examined in my dissertation," Vuori tells HS.
The guilt aspect, Vuori explains, derives from dramatic changes in society and working life expectations that began in the 1980s, and which have created an environment nowadays that constantly demands self-improvement.
"And if a person feels they are failing to construct their personal success story and to compete for resources, they blame themselves and become depressed," he says.
Last year, the All Points North podcast examined the trials and tribulations that foreigners in Finland can face when seeking out mental health care. Listen to the episode via this embedded player, on Yle Areena, via Apple, Spotify or wherever you get your podcasts.
The poor state of healthcare
Tabloid Iltalehti meanwhile reports on more financial misery for Finland's network of regional healthcare authorities, also known as wellbeing services counties.
According to information obtained by IL, plans by the regional authorities to cut back even further on personnel costs this year represent a "ticking time bomb" in terms of redundancies in the healthcare sector.
The regions have already reduced their workforce by a combined total of about 3,600 person-years — a HR term that measures the amount of work done by one person in a year — between 2023 and 2025. There are plans in the pipeline to cut back even further this year, by an estimated 1,500 person-years, according to IL.
"The number is likely higher because many regions have set significant savings targets for personnel this year, but the exact means of achieving these savings have not yet been decided," the tabloid writes.
The bleak financial situation facing Finland's healthcare sector has been widely reported over the past few years, but Iltalehti's regional breakdown reveals that some areas have much deeper problems than others.
Central Finland, for example, is described by IL as "facing the country's worst financial problems", and while it has already cut 1,200 jobs, another 500 person-years are now on the line.
Storm blows off course
Ilta-Sanomat informed its readers on Monday that Finland would be in the eye of a winter storm so powerful this weekend that "it's worth considering whether to even go outside".
But while a week is a long time in politics, 24 hours can be an equally long time in meteorology.
Because on Tuesday morning the same paper is back with new information: let's not batten down the hatches just yet.
"On Monday, it looked like a low-pressure system was approaching Finland and we would get quite heavy snowfall up to the latitude of Oulu during the weekend," Pinja Rauhamäki of the Finnish Meteorological Institute says.
"Now, however, it looks like the low-pressure system’s track will pass much further south, and according to the current forecast the snowfalls would only reach the southern coast — if even there."
Much further south, in this context, means Riga — with the Latvian capital now looking set to receive the mounds of snow previously promised to Finland.
But if the storm can change its trajectory once, could it do so again?
"If only we could say for sure... High-pressure systems play a role in how the track of a low-pressure system can change. High-pressure systems tend to steer the paths of low-pressure systems. It’s a very interesting weather event, and there are still many possibilities open," Rauhamäki explains.
Or watch this space, in other words.
