JMIR Mental Health call for papers theme issue on Affective Computing for Mental Well-Being

JMIR Mental Health, a premier SCIE/PubMed/Scopus-indexed, peer-reviewed journal with a unique focus on digital mental health, is inviting submissions to a new theme issue titled “Affective Computing for Mental Well-Being.”

Affective computing holds promising potential in aiding various important processes aimed at enhancing and sustaining mental well-being. Such techniques can be used to augment traditional questionnaire-based diagnosis methods or enhance self-awareness by tracking user states and behavior with multimodal cues associated with verbal and nonverbal communication, physiology, and physical activities. There are great opportunities to develop personalized interventions based on individuals’ affective states and their unique needs and preferences. Extended reality (XR) solutions and mobile health (mHealth) apps can also be enhanced by becoming more responsive and adaptive. Moreover, such technologies have the capacity to advance health equity by enhancing access to mental health services, particularly for individuals encountering barriers like geographical distance, resource scarcity, or the stigma surrounding seeking assistance. However, addressing the intricate landscape of mental well-being demands a multidisciplinary approach, necessitating a comprehensive strategy from diverse perspectives and disciplines. Given the ethical issues emerging from advancements in affective computing and artificial intelligence within mental health, it is vital to address these concerns. 

This theme issue invites original contributions, including but not limited to:

• Data collection, archiving, and retrieval in the context of mental health
• Multimodal recognition of stress, negative affect, sleep, social isolation, or other mental health–related symptoms
• Automatic behavior and affect coding 
• Affective modeling
• Analysis of interactions with patients, including synchrony and alliance
• Natural language processing (NLP) for analysis of medical texts 
• Multimodal and multitemporal information fusion in the context of mental health
• Chatbots, virtual humans, XR, serious games, etc, for mental health support
• User-centric design for mental health applications
• Customization, personalization, and adaptation
• User studies on affective computing technology for mental health
• Therapeutic relationship and artificial empathy
• Social and ethical issues regarding the use of affective technologies for mental health support, such as privacy, trust, and bias

The deadline for submissions is February 15, 2024. All accepted manuscripts will be published as part of the JMIR Mental Health special issue titled “Affective Computing for Mental Well-Being.”

To learn more please visit: https://mental.jmir.org/announcements/424

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About JMIR Publications

JMIR Publications is a leading, born-digital, open access publisher of 35+ academic journals and other innovative scientific communication products that focus on the intersection of health and technology. Its flagship journal, the Journal of Medical Internet Research, is the leading digital health journal globally in content breadth and visibility, and it is the largest journal in the medical informatics field.

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