Reshaping Public Mental Health After COVID-19: Equity, Innovation and Resilience

Dear Colleagues,

The COVID-19 pandemic has reshaped the global landscape of public mental health, exposing longstanding vulnerabilities, widening inequities, and generating unprecedented demand for support and services. The pandemic has led to a substantial rise in anxiety, depression, grief-related distress, and trauma-related conditions worldwide, with disproportionate impacts on marginalised communities, essential workers, people with disabilities, and those already experiencing health and socioeconomic inequalities. Beyond the health crisis itself, disruptions to social connectedness, employment, education, and healthcare delivery have intensified psychological distress and hindered access to timely mental health support.

Despite these challenges, the post-pandemic era offers important opportunities to rethink how mental health is conceptualised, delivered, and embedded within public health systems. Emerging evidence has highlighted innovative, community-centred, culturally responsive, and digitally enabled strategies that can expand reach and improve outcomes. Success stories—from digitally delivered psychological interventions to trauma-informed community responses—demonstrate the potential to build more resilient, equitable, and person-centred systems of care. However, further research and implementation insights are critically needed to translate innovation into sustained and scalable practice.

This Special Issue invites the submission of manuscripts addressing “Reshaping Public Mental Health after COVID-19: Equity, Innovation and Resilience”. We welcome interdisciplinary research addressing the following topics:

• Examines the long-term mental health impact of the pandemic across populations;
• Evaluates the effectiveness, cost-effectiveness, or scalability of innovative mental health interventions;
• Addresses inequities in access, outcomes, and quality of mental healthcare;
• Explores policy reforms, service transformation, and resilience-building strategies;
• Highlights under-represented groups, under-researched settings, or novel community-based approaches.

Dr. Mariyana Schoultz
Guest Editor

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. International Journal of Environmental Research and Public Health 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 2500 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.