Celebrating the 40th Anniversary of Issues in Mental Health Nursing

With this issue, the journal publishes its 40th volume, surely an event worthy of joyous celebration. Tracing the history of Issues in Mental Health Nursing reveals the amazing growth of scholarly work by psychiatric-mental health nurse clinicians and researchers. Venues for publication of research in our specialty were very limited when the journal was conceived, and much of the scholarly work was being done by students in MSN and PhD programs. The first editor, Barbara Sideleau, decided to publish a list of master’s theses and doctoral dissertations in each issue because “there is no central clearinghouse for reporting what is being researched by nurses in the field of psychiatric and mental health nursing…Deans and directors of nursing graduate programs were contacted in order to obtain a listing of research currently being conducted at their universities” (Sidelieu, 1979, p. 98). By the mid-1980s, nursing science was maturing, as shown by the establishment of the National Center for Nursing Research (later the National Institute of Nursing Research) and the proliferation of scholarly conferences and journals.

Issues in Mental Health Nursing began as a quarterly publication but had advanced by 1997 to 6 issues per year, under the stewardship of editors Phyllis Stern and Mary Swanson Crockett. The journal was already highly respected when I took over as editor in 1997. I credit my predecessors for maintaining high standards, recruiting distinguished psychiatric nurses to serve on the IMHN editorial board, and increasing the international scope of the journal. By 2000, the burgeoning number of submissions convinced the publisher to increase frequency of publication to 8 issues per year, which soon became 10, and then 12 in 2007, making IMHN one of the few psychiatric-mental health nursing journals being published monthly. In contrast to manuscript submissions averaging around 50 per year in 1997, the number of submissions for 2018 exceeded 300.

A hallmark of this journal is the publication of special themed issues, sometimes highlighting mental health needs of discrete populations such as refugees and racial/ethnic minorities, and sometimes addressing broad transnational concerns such as stigma of mental illness, family violence, and lack of access to mental health care services. You are about to read an incredibly timely and important global mental health issue. The publication of Routledge Handbook of Global Mental Health Nursing by Yearwood and Hines-Martin in (2017) revealed gaps in knowledge about mental health care in many countries. Hence, our Call for Papers for this special issue. Response to this call was very gratifying.

I am so pleased to report that 11 countries are represented in this special issue: South Korea, Thailand, Iran, Turkey, Netherlands, Jordan, Australia, Kenya, Portugal, Canada, and China. In addition to articles that allow us to learn about mental health care of indigenous Australians, nursing consultation in a public bath house in Portugal, depression among Chinese rural elderly, and an empowerment program for families of persons with mental illness in South Korea (just a sampling of the topics herein), the issue includes an excellent column by Jacquelyn Flaskerud on global mental health initiatives. This month’s “Comments, Critique, and Inspiration” column by Michelle Cleary and colleagues focuses on the disparities between low- and middle-income countries (LMICs) and more resource-rich higher income countries (HICs). In sum, this special issue on global mental health contributes to narrowing the gaps in knowledge identified by Yearwood and Hines-Martin. As they noted in the concluding chapter of their book, nurses can play a vital role in reducing the global burden of poor mental health and the inadequacy of existing services. We must seize our unique opportunity to “advocate for and partner with individuals, communities, groups, and governments to effect change” (2017, p. 482).