Development, Validation, and Application of Measures Assessing Mental Health and Functional Outcomes

Dear Colleagues,

Robust, culturally sensitive, and clinically relevant measurement tools are essential for advancing mental health research, practice, and policy. As functional recovery may occur without full symptomatic recovery in psychiatric populations, accurate assessment of both clinical symptoms (e.g., depression, anxiety, and psychosis) and functional recovery outcomes (e.g., social relationships, occupational capacity, and daily living skills) enables personalized care, evaluates intervention efficacy, and tracks recovery trajectories. Moreover, assessments of mental health symptoms and functioning in the general population are informative to understand subclinical expressions of psychopathology and their impact on normal functioning. This Special Issue calls for innovations in assessment and measurement that bridge psychometric excellence with real-world utility across diverse populations and settings.

We invite original research, systematic reviews, methodological papers, and critical commentaries focused on the development, validation, implementation, and practical application of measures for mental health symptoms and functional recovery. Submissions should be related to assessments and measures of the health-related aspects of mental health (e.g., symptom severity, diagnosis, and functioning). Submissions should emphasize methodological rigor, accessibility, and translational impact.

Topics of interest include the following:

Measurement development and validation:

• Novel questionnaires and scales assessing mental health symptoms (e.g., transdiagnostic processes and cognitive–emotional functioning) and multidimensional functional outcomes (e.g., health-related quality of life).
• Cross-cultural adaptation, translation, and validation of existing measures.
• Integration of lived experience in co-designing patient-centered assessments.

Innovative methodologies and technologies:

• Digital health tools (e.g., ecological momentary assessment, passive sensing, AI-driven analytics).
• Multimodal assessment strategies (e.g., combining self-report, behavioral, or biomarker data).
• Approaches to reduce assessment burden while maximizing reliability (e.g., computerized adaptive testing).

Implementation and clinical utility:

• Real-world application of measures in clinical, community, or primary care settings.
• Tools for tracking treatment response, relapse risk, or recovery milestones.
• Barriers and facilitators to adopting evidence-based assessments in routine practice.
• Economic evaluations of measurement implementation.

Specialized applications:

• Tailored tools for specific populations (e.g., children/adolescents, older adults, neurodiverse individuals, and cultural minorities).
• Measures for understudied conditions (e.g., somatic symptom disorders and treatment-resistant presentations).
• Tools assessing comorbid physical and mental health outcomes.

Psychometric advancements:

• Modern validation approaches (e.g., network analysis and item response theory).
• Re-evaluation of existing measures’ conceptual and structural validity.
• Strategies to address measurement bias (e.g., across gender, race, or socioeconomic status).

Dr. Hong Wang Fung
Dr. Anson Kai Chun Chau
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-anonymized peer-review process. A guide for authors and other relevant information for submission of manuscripts is available on the Instructions for Authors page. Healthcare 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 2700 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.

• health assessment
• psychometric scales
• measurement-based care
• psychosocial health
• mental health
• psychiatric assessment
• validation