Despite advances in biomedical science, neuropsychiatric disorders remain a leading cause of disability worldwide, affecting over 1 billion individuals. Current epidemiological trends paint a sobering picture: more than 300 million people live with depressive disorders, over 50 million with Alzheimer’s disease and other dementias, and 50 million with epilepsy. The prevalence of Parkinson’s disease is projected to reach 25.2 million by 2050. Critically, the global number of people living with dementia is expected to nearly triple from 57.4 million in 2019 to 152.8 million by 2050, driven largely by population aging. Simultaneously, the incidence of mental disorders among adolescents and young adults has risen markedly since 2019, underscoring the need for a life-course perspective that connects early neurodevelopmental vulnerability with brain–behavior trajectories across the lifespan.
To address these challenges and fill a critical editorial gap at the intersection of neurological and psychiatric disorders, a new international journal, Neuropsychiatric Research, has been launched. The editorial titled “A New Journal in Neuropsychiatric Medicine—Illuminating the Brain–Behavior Interplay for Mental and Neurological Health” was published as the inaugural editorial in Neuropsychiatric Research on July 23, 2026.
The scope of the journal covers the full spectrum of neuropsychiatric medicine, including fundamental neuroscience, genetic and epigenetic investigations, neuroinflammation and glial biology, advanced neuroimaging and neurophysiology, and novel therapeutic approaches such as neurostimulation, precision drugs, and cell and gene therapy. Within the emerging field of digital neuropsychiatry, the journal particularly encourages work on AI-assisted phenotyping, mobile and ecological momentary assessment, wearable and sensor-derived behavioral markers, digital therapeutics, computational psychiatry, and multimodal data integration for prediction and precision intervention.
Consistent with modern open science standards, Neuropsychiatric Research supports prospective protocol registration, transparent reporting, reproducible analytic workflows, responsible data sharing, and the dissemination of large-scale open-access datasets whenever ethically and legally feasible. The journal welcomes submissions of diverse article types, including Original Research Articles, Systematic Reviews and Meta-Analyses, Case Reports, Consensus Statements and Clinical Practice Guidelines, Letters to the Editor, Comments, Brief Reports, Communications, and so on.
doi:10.2738/NPR.2026.0005