Mental Health in Chronic Disease: Advancing Assessment, Intervention, and Equity Across Diverse Populations
A Special Issue of Healthcare (ISSN 2227-9032) belonging to the section "Mental Health and Psychosocial Well-being".
Deadline for manuscript submissions: 30 April 2027 | Viewed by 438
Editors
2. The Herbert Wertheim School of Public Health and Human Longevity Science, The University of California San Diego, La Jolla, CA 92093, USA
Interests: health psychology; public mental health; chronic diseases; psychosocial adjustment; suicide and self-harm; precision health psychology; global mental health: basic psychological care
Interests: social and health psychology; psychological assessment; mental health; quality of life; chronic skin diseases; intergroup relations and health(care); health disparities
Special Issue Information
Dear Colleagues,
The mental health consequences of chronic diseases remain one of the most pressing yet fragmented areas of contemporary health research. Although conditions such as cancer, diabetes, cardiovascular disease, HIV/AIDS, kidney disease, chronic pain, and dermatological conditions including vitiligo affect hundreds of millions of people worldwide, the psychological science needed to understand and address their mental health burden has developed unevenly. Measurement tools validated in one population often fail to capture the lived experience of patients in another population. Coping and adjustment processes that are well documented in high-income Western settings have been insufficiently examined in the diverse cultural contexts in which chronic disease prevalence is increasing most rapidly. Moreover, the social and structural forces that shape how patients are treated, including stigma, provider bias, and systemic inequities in healthcare delivery, are only beginning to be integrated into mainstream chronic disease research.
We invite you to contribute to this Special Issue, titled “Mental Health in Chronic Disease: Advancing Assessment, Intervention, and Equity Across Diverse Populations.”
This Special Issue brings together health psychology, clinical science, social psychology, and public health to address these gaps. We request contributions that not only describe the mental health challenges faced by chronic disease populations but also advance the tools, mechanisms and theories, and interventions needed to respond to them. We particularly welcome research on the development and cross-cultural validation of psychological assessment instruments; research addressing the mechanisms, design and evaluation of scalable and low-cost interventions; and research examining how discrimination and health system factors jointly influence patient outcomes. Submissions adopting global, intersectional, or translational perspectives are especially encouraged.
In this Special Issue, original research articles and reviews are welcome. Research areas may include (but are not limited to) the following:
- Development, adaptation, and cross-cultural validation of psychological instruments for chronic disease populations;
- Stress, coping, and psychological adjustment across chronic conditions, life stages, and cultural settings;
- Anxiety, depression, suicidal ideation, and self-harm among individuals living with chronic illness;
- Scalable, evidence-based, and low-cost psychological interventions for chronic disease management in diverse settings;
- Precision health psychology approaches to tailoring mental health support for chronic disease populations;
- Translational and community-engaged research linking scientific evidence to clinical practice and health policy;
- Cross-cultural, global health, and intersectional perspectives on mental health in chronic illness;
- Stigma, social identity, and their consequences for mental health, help-seeking, and treatment engagement;
- Public mental health and chronic diseases: surveillance, screening, and mental health indicators in chronic illness populations;
- Basic psychological care: stepped-care models and integration of psychological support into primary care;
- eMental Health: scalable, low-cost digital interventions for mental health in chronic diseases;
- Applied psychometrics: robust measures to inform clinical decisions, identify risk profiles, and personalize care;
- Provider’s implicit and explicit biases, burnout, and their effects on care quality and equity.
We look forward to receiving your contributions.
Dr. André Faro
Guest Editor
Dr. Emerson Do Bú
Guest Editor Assistant
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.
Keywords
- mental health
- chronic diseases
- psychological assessment
- coping and adjustment
- stigma
- health disparities
- implicit bias
- evidence-based interventions
- cross-cultural validation
- precision health psychology
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