Elsevier, a world-leading provider of scientific, technical and medical (STM) information products and services, is pleased to announce the launch of the Open Access, online-only journal Internet Interventions. The journal is published in affiliation with the International Society for Research on Internet Interventions (ISRII) and the European Society for Research on Internet Interventions (ESRII).
The internet is increasingly used for delivering interventions aimed at improving mental and physical health. Internet interventions - often self-guided or partly self-guided - have in the past proven effective in treating a number of psychiatric conditions, including among others: depression, panic disorder, social anxiety disorder, insomnia, as well as more general medical conditions, such as headache, back pain, tinnitus and smoking cessation.
Today's increased focus on internet interventions can be explained by its global applicability, and cost efficiency. Technological advances allow for novel intervention components, such as user-friendly visual screening instruments, video-based exposure therapy, interactive role-playing, automated reasoning models, all lowering the help-seeking threshold.
"With the approval of government and medical insurers, use of Internet interventions for treatment have already been integrated into the regular healthcare systems in the US and UK, and in Sweden, the Netherlands and Australia, to name a few examples. This new journal will provide a home for high quality research papers on the application of information technology in mental and behavioral healthcare," said Prof. Gerhard Andersson, Editor-in-Chief Internet Interventions.
"Mental health problems have great impact on all societies across the globe; they are significant contributors to the burden of disease and the loss of quality of life, and have huge economic and social costs. Despite the increasingly large number of papers published on the topic of e-mental health over the past decade, until today there was no dedicated peer-reviewed scientific journal to collect this research," said Lisa Colson, Associate Publisher at Elsevier. "Internet Interventions fills this gap and we are proud to work with the leading experts in this emerging research area; Professors Gerhard Andersson of Link-ping University, Per Carlbring of Stockholm University and Heleen Riper of the Vrije University Amsterdam, who together head up the Editorial Leadership of the journal."
Internet Interventions follows the article based publishing model which allows for immediate publication of the final version of a paper without waiting for other articles to be ready to compile a full issue.
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