Mental Health Science: A multidisciplinary journal

Abstract

Health is not merely the absence of disease or infirmity. Instead, it is a state of complete physical, mental, and social well-being (World Health Organization, 2020). As such, studying mental health requires broad, interdisciplinary approaches that will help better understand how the brain, body, and environment interact in maintaining mental health, how people with (or at risk of) impaired mental health can be identified or grouped, or how to develop new and improved interventions for persons with mental disorders. Mental Health Science adopts this broad scope of mental health and aims to support the establishment of mental health science as a “super discipline.”

The primary scope of the journal covers global mental research in its core disciplines such as psychology, psychiatry, neuroscience, and public health and policy. However, the field of mental health research worldwide is broad and fragmented. It covers a diversity of health conditions and is driven by a large and varied population of researchers and funding organizations. Thus, the journal aims to not only include the more “traditional” disciplines associated with mental health, but also integrate with research from related fields such as nursing, genomics research, pharmacology, education, criminology, medical sociology, and others. This focus on both transdiagnostic and transdisciplinary approaches will facilitate a greater and more pronounced understanding of mental health disorders from individual pathophysiology to community-wide consequences. Given the scope of our journal, we have three co-editors-in-chief—Dr. Adrian Meule (psychology), Dr. Nathaniel G. Harnett (neuroscience), and Dr. T. Greg Rhee (clinical psychiatry and public mental health)—who will assist with scientifically rigorous and fair publication processes.

Mental Health Science will further embrace a global perspective on mental health research. For example, several inequities have been found in mental health research with most funding—in fact, more than 98%—being awarded by and spent in high-income countries (Woelbert et al., 2020). At the same time, mental health research has become more collaborative in recent decades; while only 3% of articles published in 1980 were the result of international collaboration, this proportion rose to 22% in 2011 (Larivière et al., 2013). As an international journal, Mental Health Science' editorial board is composed of experts from different countries with an effort to cover diverse regions and cultures. Following this mindset, the journal is committed to publishing scholarship that respects diversity, which includes work from scholars from a range of institutional affiliations, nationalities, and career stages.

There is a prescient need for easily accessible and available research to serve the global scientific community. As such, Mental Health Science is a gold open access journal and all published articles can be read and downloaded for free by every individual who has access to the Internet. This also means that copyright on any article is retained by the authors and users are allowed to copy, distribute, adapt, and make commercial use of the article as long as the authors are properly attributed. In addition, the journal also supports other open research practices such as transparent peer review and expects that the data and other supplemental materials of a study are openly accessible and shared (Nosek et al., 2015). In an effort to support good scientific practice, the journal also offers—and encourages—to publish registered reports (Chambers & Tzavella, 2022).

In addition to registered reports, Mental Health Science welcomes a variety of article types that advance the goal of understanding global mental health. Original research articles and meta-analyses on relevant topics are encouraged as are novel methodological and study protocols focused on approaches to assessing psychological, behavioral, epidemiological, and neural facets of mental health. Articles describing newly developed software tools are also of interest to the journal as are commentaries on emergent topics in the field. Distribution of new techniques, approaches, and data are key to translating research findings into improved bio-psycho-social well-being across the planet and the journal thus seeks to facilitate improvements in the science of mental health across multiple domains.

It has been estimated that untreated mental health problems account for 13% of the total global burden of disease and it is projected that, by 2030, mental health problems will be the leading cause of mortality and morbidity globally (World Health Organization, 2012). Mental Health Science brings various fields together to address this common, pressing, and growing crisis. As an interdisciplinary, open access journal that strongly supports open research practices, we hope to improve the quality of mental health research and boost dissemination of its findings to raise public awareness, destigmatize, better understand, and ultimately, contribute to treat and prevent mental illness effectively.