Citation
Carson, J. and Prescott, J. (2024), "Editorial", Mental Health and Social Inclusion, Vol. 28 No. 5, pp. 369-369. https://doi.org/10.1108/MHSI-11-2024-193
Publisher
:Emerald Publishing Limited
Copyright © 2024, Emerald Publishing Limited
This issue of Mental Health and Social Inclusion (MHSI) is a bumper issue. This is to enable us to catch up with a backlog of articles. Historically the journal had four issues a year with eight papers in each. Increasing numbers of submissions meant we then progressed to six issues with eight papers. Next year we are moving to six issues with 10 papers. That is an 87% increase in two years. It perhaps represents a global increase in the incidence of mental health problems, in part fuelled by the COVID-19 pandemic, but also a growing awareness of the importance of mental health in most societies. As societies have become richer, there has not been a corresponding increase in happiness, the so-called Easterlin paradox. To borrow a term from Corey Keyes, the journal is thriving not languishing.
This special issue shows how MHSI attracts papers from all over the world. This issue contains papers from Vietnam, the Philippines, Singapore, Saudi Arabia, Australia, Colombia, Jordan, North America, Luxembourg, Ukraine, Tunisia, India, Nigeria and of course the UK. Topics covered ranged from mobile apps, recovery colleges and peer support, to COVID-19, laughter, homelessness, intimate partner violence and job loss, to name just a few. As the popularity of the journal grows, we are concentrating on our core market which is mental health. It seems hard to believe that even with Mental Health in our title, we receive quite a few papers that do not even address the issue of mental health.
The huge increase in the application of digital technologies in mental health has led to the development of a “sister journal” Mental Health and Digital Technologies, edited by Dr Steven Barnes and Dr Julie Prescott. Steven and Julie have just published a book on the same topic in the Emerald Positive Psychology series, curated by Dr Michelle Tytherleigh and Jerome. There is no doubt that digital applications are going to increase dramatically, and the new journal is well-placed to reflect this.
Julie and I are very excited about the year ahead and the further expansion of the journal. While we have published several papers that have featured very large empirical studies, as well as papers from leading authorities in the field, e.g. Professor Carol Ryff, Professor Mike Steger and Professor Ryan Niemiec, we will always have space for papers which represent the lived experience perspective. We are grateful to Robert Hurst for continuing to curate the Remarkable Lives series. Dr Freda Gonot-Schoupinsky has moved from a series on laughter professionals to a series of positive autoethnographic accounts from leading positive psychologists such as Professor Paul Wong and Professor Everett Worthington. We have also benefitted from a set of beautifully written autobiographical accounts from Kirsty Lilley.
The journal is produced by colleagues working for KW Global and we are grateful to Ruchita Chavan and Vidhi Tiyagi in India as well as Caitlin Murphy and our publisher Jo Sharrocks in the UK. Our greatest debt of gratitude is to our readers and contributors. Without your contributions, there would be no journal. Keep reading, keep writing.
Professor Jerome Carson, Editor-in-Chief Dr Julie Prescott, Co-Editor.