Understanding and Preventing Internalizing Problems in Children and Adolescents
A special issue of Behavioral Sciences (ISSN 2076-328X). This special issue belongs to the section "Child and Adolescent Psychiatry".
Deadline for manuscript submissions: 26 November 2026 | Viewed by 1
Special Issue Editors
Interests: child and adolescent psychiatry; internalizing problems; prevention; co-regulation; co-rumination; affective neuroscience
Special Issue Information
Dear Colleagues,
Across Western societies, there is an increasing number of children and adolescents experiencing emotional difficulties, often expressed as internalizing problems that, if left unaddressed or untreated, tend to crystallize into psychopathological presentations, such as depressive and anxiety disorders, with long-lasting and pervasive impact on individuals’ lives. Childhood and adolescence are developmental stages marked by heightened emotional intensity and evolving neurobiological capacities for emotion regulation. Relative to adults, children and adolescents experience higher levels of negative affect in everyday life. The challenges that youths face in this developmental period coincide with increases in societal stressors, such as pressure to perform, rising individualism and perfectionism, and inhibitory acceleration. It is possibly these dynamics between such societal pressures and pronounced emotional reactivity that highlight the need for children and adolescents to learn to implement adaptive emotion regulation strategies since ineffective emotion regulation strategies are linked to depressive and anxiety symptoms among youth. Despite the marked increases in societal stressors, the decreases in youth mental wellbeing, and the potential role of adaptive emotion regulation in this process, relatively little is known about how youths in direct contact with classroom peers may engage in adaptive or maladaptive emotion regulation strategies when coping with societal stressors. We refer to this peer-involved process as interpersonal emotion regulation. For this Special Issue, we first invite authors to present studies on the development of societal stressors, and internalizing problems in school-aged children and adolescents. We also invite contributions on the longitudinal developmental associations between societal stressors, interpersonal emotion regulation among classroom peers, and internalizing problem development in children and adolescents. We then extend this focus by inviting authors to present empirical work on school-based intervention studies that aim to foster adaptive interpersonal emotion regulation strategies within mainstream primary and secondary school children. We particularly welcome contributions that evaluate the effectiveness of such interventions in terms of preventing the onset or recurrence of mental health problems among children and adolescents and in terms of promoting overall wellbeing.
Dr. Patricia Vuijk
Dr. Pol van Lier
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. Behavioral Sciences is an international peer-reviewed open access monthly 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 2200 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.
Keywords
- societal stressors
- interpersonal emotion regulation strategies
- school-based mental health promotion programs
- children
- adolescents
Benefits of Publishing in a Special Issue
- Ease of navigation: Grouping papers by topic helps scholars navigate broad scope journals more efficiently.
- Greater discoverability: Special Issues support the reach and impact of scientific research. Articles in Special Issues are more discoverable and cited more frequently.
- Expansion of research network: Special Issues facilitate connections among authors, fostering scientific collaborations.
- External promotion: Articles in Special Issues are often promoted through the journal's social media, increasing their visibility.
- Reprint: MDPI Books provides the opportunity to republish successful Special Issues in book format, both online and in print.
Further information on MDPI's Special Issue policies can be found here.
