Mental and Behavioral Health among Vulnerable Adolescents: Perspective, Associated Factors, and Empowerment Programs

Dear Colleagues,

The concept of vulnerability refers to people who are exposed to risks more often than other populations or their peers. Existing evidence suggests that adolescence itself can be described as a vulnerability factor. Due to the physical and mental effects of puberty as well as the need to take up new social roles and respond to challenges, adolescents are highly exposed to mental, behavioral, and social risks and threats. These risks can increase severely among adolescents who belong to one or more vulnerable groups such as orphans, refugees, or adolescents with mental or physical disabilities.

In the past few years, the search for effective ways to improve the health status of vulnerable groups of adolescents has accelerated. However, there are still a lot of shortcomings that need to be addressed, especially with respect to skills-based health programs and empowerment approaches.

The Special Issue welcomes original research, brief reports, methodological papers, systematic reviews, perspectives, project reports, and commentaries addressing any aspect of vulnerable adolescents’ mental and behavioral health such as need assessments, associated factors, and experimental programs, specifically with the empowerment perspective.

Prof. Dr. Christiane Stock
Dr. Marjan Mohammadzadeh
Guest Editors

Manuscript Submission Information

Manuscripts should be submitted online at www.mdpi.com by registering and logging in to this website. Once you are registered, click here to go to the submission form. Manuscripts can be submitted until the deadline. All submissions that pass pre-check are peer-reviewed. Accepted papers will be published continuously in the journal (as soon as accepted) and will be listed together on the special issue website. Research articles, review articles as well as short communications are invited. For planned papers, a title and short abstract (about 250 words) can be sent to the Editorial Office for assessment.

Submitted manuscripts should not have been published previously, nor be under consideration for publication elsewhere (except conference proceedings papers). All manuscripts are thoroughly refereed through a single-blind peer-review process. A guide for authors and other relevant information for submission of manuscripts is available on the Instructions for Authors page. Adolescents is an international peer-reviewed open access semimonthly journal published by MDPI.

Please visit the Instructions for Authors page before submitting a manuscript. The Article Processing Charge (APC) for publication in this open access journal is 1200 CHF (Swiss Francs). Submitted papers should be well formatted and use good English. Authors may use MDPI's English editing service prior to publication or during author revisions.