About General Psychiatry

General Psychiatry

Overview

General Psychiatry is a bimonthly, peer-reviewed, open-access medical journal covering psychiatry, mental health and clinical neuroscience. It is published by the Shanghai Mental Health Center in Shanghai, China, in partnership with Wiley, and it is affiliated with the Shanghai Mental Health Center of the Shanghai Jiao Tong University School of Medicine. The journal holds a distinctive place in Chinese medicine because it began in 1959 as the Shanghai Archives of Psychiatry, described by its publisher and by its own history as China's first psychiatric journal. Renamed General Psychiatry in August 2018, it now publishes entirely in English for an international readership while retaining a close connection to Chinese psychiatric research, clinical practice and mental-health policy. Its print ISSN is 2096-5923 and its online ISSN is 2517-729X, identifiers that link the current title to a publishing history of more than six decades.

As an open-access title, General Psychiatry makes its research freely available to readers rather than placing it behind a subscription paywall. It serves psychiatrists, psychologists, neuroscientists, mental-health professionals and interdisciplinary researchers who work on the causes, diagnosis and treatment of mental disorders. That broad professional audience reflects the journal's deliberately general scope: despite its Shanghai base, it is not a house journal for a single hospital department, but a general psychiatry journal intended to carry work from China and from other countries side by side.

Origins as Shanghai Archives of Psychiatry in 1959

The journal was established in 1959 as the Shanghai Archives of Psychiatry, whose Chinese name is Shanghai Jingshen Yixue. At that time psychiatry was a small and developing specialty in China, and a dedicated journal gave clinicians and researchers a place to record case experience, clinical observation and early research in mental disorders. Publication in the early years was at irregular intervals, a pattern common for specialist Chinese medical periodicals of that period. The title nevertheless survived and developed with its host institution, the Shanghai Mental Health Center, which grew into one of China's leading centres for psychiatric care, research and professional training.

The continuity from 1959 to the present matters for understanding the journal. General Psychiatry is not a new title created for the international market in 2018; it is the renamed continuation of a journal that had already published for nearly sixty years under its Shanghai name. Researchers tracing older Chinese psychiatric literature therefore need to search under Shanghai Archives of Psychiatry for material published before the change of name, while newer work appears under General Psychiatry.

Development, Frequency and the Move to English

The journal's publication pattern stabilised over time. After its irregular early years, it became a quarterly publication in 1989 and then a bimonthly publication in 2003, issuing six numbers a year. That bimonthly rhythm has continued under the General Psychiatry name. A second decisive change came in 2012, when the journal transitioned to an all-English publication. From the first issue of 2012, its content was published in English, with Chinese-language translations of abstracts provided for original articles, making Chinese psychiatric research directly readable by international specialists without translation.

The English transition changed who could use the journal. Work on mental-health services, epidemiology, clinical practice and basic neuroscience in China became accessible to psychiatrists and researchers outside China in the language of international medical publishing, while Chinese readers retained abstract access in Chinese. The move also prepared the journal for the international indexing, partnerships and editorial ambitions that followed in the next decade.

Renaming to General Psychiatry and Publishing Partnerships

In August 2018 the journal changed its name from Shanghai Archives of Psychiatry to General Psychiatry and began publication with the BMJ Publishing Group. The new name signalled a broader, international identity: a general psychiatry journal based in Shanghai but addressed to the worldwide field. Under BMJ, the journal used the BMJ open-access platform and the article identifier prefix associated with that period, and it built an international profile in psychiatry and mental health.

In late 2025 its publishing work moved from BMJ to Wiley. Current publisher listings show Wiley as publisher, with the journal presented on the Wiley Online Library, while the Shanghai Mental Health Center remains the publishing institution in partnership with Wiley. The change of publishing partner did not change the journal's name, its Shanghai base, its bimonthly frequency or its open-access model. For librarians and authors, the practical point is continuity of title and ISSN through a change of platform, from the BMJ period to the present Wiley period.

Publisher, Host Institution and Shanghai Base

The journal is published by the Shanghai Mental Health Center, part of the Shanghai Jiao Tong University School of Medicine in Shanghai. The Center is a leading institution for mental-health care, research and professional training in Shanghai and in China more widely, and the journal's affiliation with it is stated in its publisher information. It is also a member of the Committee on Publication Ethics, known as COPE, the international body whose guidance covers publication ethics and handling of misconduct in scholarly journals.

That institutional setting shapes the journal's character. A journal hosted by a major mental-health centre sits close to clinical services, patient populations and specialist training, as well as to university research in neuroscience and psychiatry. General Psychiatry has used that position to publish both laboratory and translational work and studies grounded in services and populations, including work arising from collaborations between the Shanghai Mental Health Center and international partners in psychiatric research.

Editorial Leadership

Professor Min Zhao, President of the Shanghai Mental Health Center, and Professor Yifeng Xu, Director of the Brain Health Institute of the National Center for Mental Disorders, serve as Co-Editors-in-Chief of General Psychiatry. Professor Jinghong Chen serves as Executive Editor. The joint editorship places leadership of the journal at the head of its host centre and at a national institute concerned with brain health and mental disorders, reflecting the journal's twin identity as both a Shanghai institution and a national and international platform.

Editorial leadership of this kind is a practical matter for authors as well as a matter of prestige. The editors set the balance between clinical, biological and psychosocial psychiatry, oversee peer review, and commission or encourage work in fast-moving areas such as digital and computational psychiatry. The journal states that it advances translational research, biomarker discovery and evidence-based psychiatric care through contributions bridging international and Chinese perspectives, a mission that its senior Shanghai-based editorial team is positioned to carry out.

Scope and Subject Coverage

General Psychiatry publishes original research, systematic reviews, meta-analyses and case reports. Its stated scope includes biological psychiatry, psychopharmacology, psychiatric genetics, psychotherapy, neuroimaging, digital psychiatry, computational psychiatry and artificial intelligence in mental health, together with related fields across psychiatry, mental health and clinical neuroscience. Its publisher describes it more broadly as publishing open-access research across psychiatry, mental health and clinical neuroscience for psychiatrists, mental-health professionals and interdisciplinary researchers.

In practice that scope spans the full pathway of psychiatric knowledge. Biological work addresses genetics, neurobiology and brain imaging as they relate to mental disorders. Clinical work addresses diagnosis, pharmacological and psychological treatment, and outcomes in services. Population and health-services work addresses epidemiology, risk factors and the organisation of care. Recent published topics visible on the journal's current platform illustrate the breadth, ranging from work on Alzheimer disease in China and the global burden of mental disorders among adolescents and young adults to studies of recovery colleges across many countries and territories. The journal favours research with implications for understanding disorders and improving care, rather than purely descriptive reports without new insight.

Indexing, Recognition and Journal Standing

General Psychiatry is abstracted and indexed in the Emerging Sources Citation Index, Scopus, PubMed, the Directory of Open Access Journals, PsycInfo and the Chinese Science Citation Database. Clarivate's Master Journal List records the title, under Wiley, with ISSN 2096-5923 and eISSN 2517-729X, in the Emerging Sources Citation Index of the Web of Science Core Collection. Inclusion in PubMed and PubMed-accessible services makes its articles discoverable in the main biomedical literature search system used by clinicians worldwide, while Scopus and PsycInfo extend discovery into broader scientific and psychological literature.

The journal has also received Chinese national recognition. It was selected as an echelon journal in both Phase I, covering 2019 to 2023, and Phase II, covering 2024 to 2028, of the Excellence Action Plan for China's Scientific, Technical and Medical Journals. It has been recognised among the Excellent International Impact Academic Journals of China. Those selections mark it as one of the Chinese medical journals chosen for support in raising international influence, consistent with its English-language, open-access strategy since 2012 and 2018 respectively.

Readership and Role in Chinese and International Psychiatry

The readership of General Psychiatry is international, but its founding role remains Chinese. As China's first psychiatric journal, it documented the development of psychiatry in China from 1959 onward, first in Chinese as Shanghai Archives of Psychiatry and, since 2012, in English. That history gives its archive unusual value for historians of medicine and for researchers studying how psychiatric concepts, services and research methods developed in China over more than sixty years.

At the same time, the journal now functions as a bridge. Chinese researchers can publish in English in a journal based in their own leading mental-health centre, and international researchers can encounter Chinese work on equal terms with work from other countries, including collaborative studies. In a field where prevalence, services, family structures, stigma and treatment systems vary by country, a general journal that carries both Chinese and international evidence helps readers judge which findings travel across settings and which are specific to a particular health system or culture.

General Psychiatry Today

Today General Psychiatry continues as a bimonthly open-access journal from Shanghai, published by the Shanghai Mental Health Center in partnership with Wiley, edited by Min Zhao and Yifeng Xu with Jinghong Chen as Executive Editor, and indexed in ESCI, Scopus, PubMed, DOAJ, PsycInfo and CSCD. Its identity rests on three continuities: the 1959 founding as China's first psychiatric journal, the Shanghai Mental Health Center and Shanghai Jiao Tong University School of Medicine as its home, and a general scope covering biological, clinical, psychological and digital psychiatry. Authors considering the journal should note its article types, its preference for translational and evidence-based work, and its open-access model. Readers and librarians should note the former name, Shanghai Archives of Psychiatry, for pre-2018 material, and the ISSNs 2096-5923 and 2517-729X for catalogue searches. Few psychiatry journals combine so long a national history with so recent and deliberate an international repositioning.