Call for Abstracts: Clinical Psychological Science Special Issue on COVID-19 Pandemic and Mental Health

Co-Editors: Darby Saxbe, University of Southern California; Thomas Rodebaugh, Washington University in St. Louis; Cindy Liu, Harvard Medical School

We seek papers for an upcoming special issue on the COVID-19 pandemic and related mental health concerns for the journal Clinical Psychological Science. The pandemic is both an utterly new and unprecedented event, and one that reminds us of what is already known about the factors that influence mental health. We envision a special issue that moves beyond simply framing the pandemic as a unique historical situation, but that also shows how the pandemic can illuminate key constructs and methodologies for the field to consider in decades to come.

We will give particular consideration to forward-thinking articles that emphasize emerging issues, that can demonstrate importance as the immediate threat of the pandemic resolves, and that can extend beyond this pandemic to other stressors. We welcome timely and innovative papers that consider diverse perspectives and approaches, and are particularly interested in papers with the following features: 

• Cutting-edge cross-disciplinary methodological approaches that assess COVID-19 related psychological experiences and mental health
• Studies that document experiences and potential downstream psychological or mental health impacts among those who tested positive for COVID-19 (e.g., stigma, functional disabilities, etc.)
• New insights regarding how the pandemic has highlighted or exacerbated pre-existing disparities in stress, mental health problems, and access to mental health care 
• Findings on the implications of lockdown and social distancing on mental health with the potential to provide insight on best practices for these types of public health measures and to shed light on social influences on mental health more broadly
• Data that highlight windows of mental health risk and resilience during lifespan transitions (e.g., childhood to adolescence, emerging adulthood, transition to parenthood, aging and bereavement) 
• Examinations of how psychological factors examined in reference to mental health may also impact health behaviors relevant to the pandemic and beyond (e.g., vaccine acceptance, preventive behaviors such as masking)
• Examples of new or adapted interventions with demonstrated effects to address COVID-19-related impacts to mental health in the short and long term (e.g., interventions to address economic/social impacts). 

Abstracts (500 words max) summarizing the proposed manuscript will be reviewed on a rolling basis; for full consideration, submit abstracts by February 25, 2021 via email at [email protected]. Full manuscript invitations will be issued by early March. We encourage contributing authors to post submitted versions of their articles to Advance, SAGE’s preprint server. We also encourage authors to make their data available on the Open Science Framework or other accessible website. Please feel free to contact the Editors via email if questions arise about the scope of the special issue or the submission process.