This issue marks the 20th Anniversary of Aging & Mental Health. Created in part in a conversation over beer in a London pub, we conceived a journal that is unique and we hit exactly the target we set. Our goal was to develop a multidisciplinary and international journal. With each issue, we see that goal being met. The multidisciplinary perspective is clearly present with the co-editors, associate editors and Editorial Board. We consider our multidisciplinary focus as a counterbalance to the isolation of many academics within the confines of their own especial disciplines and subdisciplines. There is more than one proper way to study mental health and aging. So, we strive to be eclectic in the topics and methodologies of papers that we select and to encourage authors who are exploring innovative topics and methods. Given that the academic world is becoming more global, our international focus is critical for the future. Accordingly, we have increased the number of published papers reporting studies conducted in the Asian Pacific region from a few in our early years to over two dozen in 2015, and we have published studies which were conducted in eight countries including Australia, China (including Hong Kong), India, Japan, Korea, Nepal, Singapore and Taiwan last year. To further this commitment, we opened an editorial office in Hong Kong in 2015 to handle the growing number of high quality articles from the Far East, Australia and New Zealand.
Over the years, the journal has not only survived, but become a critical platform for these initial goals. The overall quality of the articles is excellent and has steadily increased.To mark this anniversary, we have gathered a set of articles from across the globe, encompassing recently accepted manuscripts that represent a diverse selection of the range of topics and perspectives of the papers that we receive. The contributions, both quantitative and qualitative, address a wide spectrum of important issues: preventing falls, relationships between parents and their children, prevalence and potential modifiable risks of delirium among intensive care patients, the association of biomarkers with measures of resilience in nursing home residents, sexual stigma attitudes, promoting theory of mind in older adults, disability as a risk factor for suicide and activities for promoting quality of life in institutional settings.
Our goal for the future is to focus on staying the course of our initial goals. If anything, the needs that we hoped the journal would address have become more pressing. There is, of course, the continuing growth in the older population, which is now a worldwide and not just a western phenomenon. Accompanying that growth is pressure on governments to control costs of programs that serve older people. As is usually the case, the cutbacks often fall on the most vulnerable, who cannot advocate for themselves and may not have strong allies who can advocate for them. Since the earliest studies of aging and mental health, research plays in part a role in trying to strip away stigma and to engage in identification of the most pressing problems and potential solutions. The best papers advance scientific inquiry, while pointing to new and promising approaches for improving health and quality of life for older people and their families, and for the quality of the programs and services that assist them. Our vision, our passion and our determination remain undiminished. We have pursued these goals with energy and persistence for the past 20 years and we will continue.