Mental Health and its Social and Cultural Implications

Dear Colleagues,

We are organizing a Special Issue on “Mental Health and its Social and Cultural Implications” in the International Journal of Environmental Research and Public Health. The venue is a peer-reviewed scientific journal that publishes articles and communications in the interdisciplinary area of environmental health sciences and public health. For detailed information on the journal, we refer you to http://www.mdpi.com/journal/ijerph.  

Mental health is a major public health- and a service system issue all around the world. There is an emerging need to prioritize it in agendas in both developed and developing countries. Among the illnesses, mental health disturbances involve the highest losses of quality of life and functioning, and these disturbances affect strongly the people’s ability to connect and cope with societal stress. At the largest, their impact extends to family generations as well as personal social networks and society as a whole.

In this Special Issue of the journal, we aim at providing insight regarding the mental health needs of people in societies that often are in transition of some kind. Mental health services and social policy affect the well being and productivity of populations in all countries. Poor living conditions, discrimination and lack of support is increasing the burden of mental illnesses worldwide, but the developing countries have to struggle in particular to find political interest and effective services for mental health.

Related research could include service system evaluation, register studies, ecological research, and reporting community service interventions and innovations. Mental disorders epidemiology as well as global reports on mortality and other outcomes could also contribute to this issue. Transcultural psychiatry is obviously a special focus of interest.

This Special Issue is open to any subject area related to the impacts of mental health on both individual and societal wellbeing in our time. The listed keywords suggest just a few of the many possibilities.

Prof. Dr. Sami Pirkola
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-anonymized 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.