Frontiers in Psychiatry is delighted to welcome Professor Veena Kumari of Brunel University, UK, as Specialty Chief Editor for Psychological Therapies, the newest section in the journal.

Psychotherapy is used by psychiatrists to help patients overcome a variety of mental health issues, the most commonplace being anxiety disorders, addictions, eating disorders, personality disorders and schizophrenia.

Veena Kumari

Veena Kumari tells us that current studies in the field typically present their findings as an average, suggesting that psychological therapies are effective in treating disorders for all people. While treatments are indeed successful in certain cases, it overlooks the fact that some people improve and some people do not.

“To move the field forward, we need a clear understanding of the psychobiological mechanisms underlying a positive change on measures of clinical and personal recovery, establish reliable predictors of change and, in doing so, potentially identify new therapy targets and innovative or refined therapeutic approaches to address them.”

Veena Kumari‘s interests lie in discovering whether and how one can combine psychological therapies with other, e.g. pharmacological therapies, to achieve the best outcomes in specific domains for people with mental health problems.

“Access to knowledge should not be limited to academics only. It needs to be easily and freely available to academics, clinicians and the general public in all parts of the world to truly advance science, health care and illness prevention practices in a global context.”

“Our ultimate goal is to accelerate communication in the field to globally promote effective evidence-based psychological therapies for mental disorders.”

Psychological Therapies is now open for submissions and is accepting Research Topic proposals.

The following Research Topic currently open for submissions:

Returning to Mechanisms in Psychological Therapies: Understand the Engine Before Steaming in, edited by Veena Kumari, Liam Mason, Warren Mansell and David Linden

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