Mental Health, Innovative Therapies and Assessment in Adolescents and Young Adults and Related Contexts

Dear Colleagues,

Adolescence is a particularly complex developmental period, with a variety of biological and psychosocial changes and the potential for various adverse situations that can lead to the onset or development of mental disorders, some of which carry a high risk of dramatic outcomes such as suicide. However, there are also classic psychosocial interventions that appear to be effective in minimizing psychopathological disorders and their associated outcomes. In addition, several innovative psychosocial interventions or therapies based on contextual models have begun to be developed, with clear evidence of effectiveness and efficiency.

In this context, screening and assessment measures are often used to evaluate the characteristics of adolescents and young adults with mental disorders before initiating a psychosocial intervention, and to determine whether these patients have experienced significant changes in their improvement process. These assessment procedures can influence the intensity and duration of the intervention used. Researchers and mental health professionals use these measures to evaluate the efficacy and effectiveness of treatment intervention (classical or innovative) in qualitative observational studies, as well as in empirical, quasi-experimental, randomized controlled trials or review studies, which can also provide interesting information about the state of the art in mental health or psychosocial interventions for adolescents or young adults.

To date, the existing scientific literature has offered a wide variety of therapeutic models and interventions, which can be seen as a richness in the processes of assessment and psychosocial intervention for this population. However, mental health professionals have conflicting or incomplete information when making decisions about the care of this group. In addition, the lack of age-appropriate and culturally sensitive interventions has hindered comparative research and meta-analysis. This undoubtedly leads to the need for improved theoretical models and tools based on adolescent psychopathology that are more appropriate to different cultural contexts and adapted to this specific age group. Further research into other models of diagnosis or assessment of mental health in young people, together with appropriate methodological adaptation of outcome measures, would benefit adolescents and young people, health professionals and researchers, and allow comparisons and meta-analyses of high-quality randomized controlled trials. Concrete actions would also be developed to arrive at more innovative psychosocial interventions or to compare classical and innovative interventions and test their efficiency and effectiveness in this clinical population.

Therefore, we are pleased to invite you to present early detection measures and evidence-based assessments that can be applied to adolescents or young people to make psychosocial or psychopathological diagnoses, develop intervention programmes or innovative therapies that can help researchers and practitioners to improve the mental health of these groups.

This Special Issue welcomes original research articles and reviews and areas of research may include, but are not limited to:

• Systematic reviews and meta-analyses of existing assessment tools or those related to transdiagnosis in mental health;
• Methodological studies (cross-sectional or longitudinal) of the validation or cultural adaptation of existing mental health assessment tools in specific countries, measuring their psychometric properties;
• Systematic reviews or meta-analyses of existing therapies or psychosocial intervention methods, or comparisons between traditional and innovative mental health therapies;
• Empirical studies (cross-sectional or longitudinal) on the efficiency or effectiveness of traditional or innovative psychosocial intervention therapies or on aspects of interest in mental health;
• Quantitative, qualitative or mixed-methods studies.

We look forward to receiving your contributions.

Prof. Dr. David Sánchez-Teruel
Prof. Dr. Mª Auxiliadora Robles-Bello
Guest Editors

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• adolescents
• young adults
• mental health
• moderating factors
• psychopathology
• suicidality
• resilience
• assessment
• methodological adaptation
• psychological therapies