Integrating Mental Health Into Chronic Illness Care: Interdisciplinary Clinical Strategies
A special issue of Journal of Clinical Medicine (ISSN 2077-0383). This special issue belongs to the section "Mental Health".
Deadline for manuscript submissions: 15 December 2026 | Viewed by 110
Special Issue Editor
Special Issue Information
Dear Colleagues,
Chronic illness represents a major global health challenge, accounting for a substantial burden of morbidity, reduced functioning, and healthcare utilization worldwide. Its complexity arises from multifactorial processes encompassing biological, psychological, and social dimensions, highlighting the need for multidimensional and integrative clinical frameworks.
Within this perspective, psychological processes play a pivotal role in both the experience and management of chronic illness. Processes such as emotional regulation, cognitive appraisal, and maladaptive behavioural patterns are closely intertwined with disease trajectories, influencing symptom perception, treatment adherence, and overall health outcomes. At the same time, living with chronic illness is frequently associated with significant psychological distress, including anxiety, depression, and diminished quality of life. This bidirectional relationship underscores the need to move beyond linear models toward dynamic, integrative, and patient-centred approaches to care.
Addressing this complexity requires research strategies capable of capturing the interplay between mental and physical health. There is a growing need for studies that integrate clinical, psychological, and psychosomatic perspectives, while also providing evidence to inform the development of tailored and context-sensitive interventions.
This Special Issue aims to advance interdisciplinary clinical strategies for integrating mental health into chronic illness care. We welcome high-quality contributions that address these challenges through diverse methodological approaches, including clinical studies, longitudinal and cross-sectional research, systematic and narrative reviews, meta-analyses contributions.
By fostering interdisciplinary dialogue, this Special Issue seeks to promote more comprehensive assessment practices and more effective, evidence-based, and patient-centred models of care.
Dr. Emanuele Maria Merlo
Guest Editor
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Keywords
- clinical psychology
- psychosomatic medicine
- assessment
- chronic illness
- mental health
- patient-centred care
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