Global Mental Health Across Borders: Navigating Grief, Loneliness, and Resilience from Cross-Cultural Perspectives

Dear Colleagues,

Across the globe, individuals, families, communities, and nations continue to grapple with the profound impacts of interpersonal trauma, loss, and violence. These experiences often give rise to complex outcomes—including grief, isolation, and loneliness—that manifest across multiple ecological levels. At the same time, resilience offers a vital lens through which to understand adaptive responses and pathways to healing.

This Special Issue seeks to explore these phenomena through culturally grounded and contextually relevant perspectives. We emphasize the importance of recognizing how trauma-related outcomes are expressed within diverse sociocultural settings, and how sustainable, evidence-informed interventions can be developed in response.

Addressing these challenges demands an interdisciplinary and collaborative approach. We welcome contributions from scholars, practitioners, and policymakers across public health and the social sciences—including social work, psychology, nursing, public health, and sociology.

We welcome submissions that explore the multifaceted dimensions of resilience, grief, loneliness, and isolation across diverse populations and contexts. This Special Issue aims to bring together original articles (both qualitative and quantitative analyses, as well as cross-sectional and longitudinal studies), systematic reviews, and meta-analyses.

Areas of focus may include, but are not limited to, the following:

• Culturally grounded expressions of grief and bereavement;
• Loneliness and social isolation across the lifespan and life transitions;
• Community-based strategies to foster resilience and social connection;
• Intersections of grief and resilience in conflict-affected or low-resource settings;
• Measurement and scale development for loneliness, grief, and resilience;
• The role of spirituality, ritual, and cultural identity in coping and adaptation;
• Structural and systemic contributors to isolation and resilience disparities;
• Innovative interventions to reduce loneliness and promote psychosocial well-being;
• Interdisciplinary models for grief support and resilience-building;
• Policy and practice frameworks addressing grief and isolation at population levels;
• Economic pressures, labor mobility, and migrant mental health;
• Cultural displacement, identity strain, and acculturative stress;
• Intersectionality in transnational migration and mental health;
• Environmental change, displacement, and psychological impacts;
• Global disparities in mental health service access;
• Digital and social media influences on mental well-being;
• Policy and governance frameworks shaping mental health priorities.

Sincerely,

Dr. Lynn Michalopoulos
Dr. Ravi Paul
Guest Editors

Manuscript Submission Information

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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. European Journal of Investigation in Health, Psychology and Education 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 1600 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.

• grief
• loss
• isolation
• cross-cultural resilience