Suicide Risk and Mental Disorders

Dear Colleagues,

We are organizing a Special Issue on “Suicide Risk and Mental Disorders” 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.

Suicide and non-fatal suicidal behaviour are major public health issues. Around 800,000 people world-wide kill themselves every year, and for every accomplished suicide, there are about twenty suicide attempts. Mental disorders are associated with an increased risk of suicide, and several meta-analyses of psychological autopsies have shown that at least 90% of the suicide victims have suffered from such disorders before suicide. The most common are depression and alcoholism, but most mental disorders show an increased risk of suicide and furthermore comorbidity is common. Suicide research has led to major advances in identifying risk and protective factors of fatal and non-fatal suicidal behavior and has also resulted in a possibility to take preventative measures. Usually, mental disorders are identified as risk factors. However, there remains a gap in the identification of specific risks for individual mental disorders. Especially, there are very few studies on the risk in depressive disorders, though bipolar disorders are more thoroughly studied. More knowledge is also needed about alcoholism and other substance use disorders.

In this Special Issue, we welcome submissions to fill in the gap of knowledge on the suicide risk, suicidal process and measure on prevention in specific mental disorders, which may be distinguished from other mental disorders. Public health preventive strategies to avoid these mental disorders develop into suicidal behavior are also of great interest. Qualitative research, as well as constructive reviews and meta-analyses, are also welcome.

Dr. Louise Brådvik
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.