World Psychiatry

About World Psychiatry

DEPTH-135-OCT2026: researched profile — verify figures on the official publisher page.

About World Psychiatry

World Psychiatry is the official journal of the World Psychiatric Association (WPA), the global professional body representing psychiatric societies around the world. It is published by Wiley (Wiley-Blackwell) on behalf of the WPA and appears three times a year. Every article is freely accessible on Wiley Online Library and in PubMed Central, and the print edition is distributed free of charge to psychiatrists whose details are supplied by WPA member societies and sections.

The journal holds an unusual position in academic publishing: Wiley states that World Psychiatry has been, for the 11th consecutive year, the psychiatry journal with the highest Impact Factor. Its editorial model is built around commissioned, agenda-setting content rather than large volumes of unsolicited submissions, which keeps each issue focused on developments of worldwide clinical and scientific significance.

In addition to the English edition, the journal is also published in Arabic, Chinese, French, Russian, Spanish and Turkish, reflecting its ambition to reach mental health professionals in every region rather than only in English-speaking countries. Its articles are routinely cited in treatment guidelines, policy documents and textbooks worldwide, and its commissioned reviews frequently become the standard references for their topics.

History

World Psychiatry was launched by the World Psychiatric Association in 2002, under the editorship of Mario Maj, who shaped the journal's identity as a venue for authoritative, globally relevant reviews and position pieces. In its early years it was published by Elsevier on the WPA's behalf; publishing moved to Wiley in 2013 (ScienceDirect notes the title as "transferred to Wiley as of 2013"), and it has been a Wiley journal ever since.

The journal's rise coincided with psychiatry's most consequential scientific debates of the 2000s and 2010s: the development of DSM-5 and ICD-11, the search for biomarkers and dimensional frameworks, and the reckoning with premature mortality in severe mental illness. World Psychiatry became the venue where these debates were staged for a global clinical audience — hosting classification reviews, the landmark physical-health syntheses of De Hert and Correll, and Cuthbert's exposition of the RDoC framework. Under Maj's editorship the journal climbed the citation rankings until it became the highest-impact psychiatry title — a position Wiley confirms it has now held for 11 consecutive years.

Under Maj's editorship the journal steadily climbed the citation rankings until it became the highest-impact psychiatry title — a position Wiley confirms it has now held for 11 consecutive years. The journal's editorial leadership changed after Maj's long tenure: as of October 2026, Wiley Online Library lists Prof. Andrea Fiorillo as Editor-in-Chief. Fiorillo is Professor of Psychiatry at the University of Campania "Luigi Vanvitelli" in Naples and has also served as President of the European Psychiatric Association. Wikipedia still names Mario Maj as editor — that entry is stale and does not reflect the current masthead.

The journal's scope and commissioning model have remained consistent through the transition: relatively few, high-significance articles per issue, written to be assimilated by practicing clinicians as well as researchers.

Aims & Scope

According to its Wiley journal page, World Psychiatry aims to disseminate information on truly significant clinical, service and research developments in the mental health field, in language that can be assimilated by the vast majority of mental health professionals worldwide. The emphasis is on significance and accessibility: articles address questions that matter to clinicians, service planners and policymakers, not only to specialist researchers.

Typical content includes:

• Special articles and commissioned reviews — agenda-setting pieces on diagnosis, classification, treatment and service organization.
• Research reports — original studies, including large meta-analyses and umbrella reviews with direct clinical implications.
• Forums and commentaries — structured debates in which a target article is followed by invited commentaries from international experts.
• Editorials — brief pieces from the editorial team and WPA leadership on professional and scientific issues.

Coverage spans the full range of psychiatry and mental health: schizophrenia and psychotic disorders, mood disorders, anxiety and trauma-related disorders, eating disorders, child and adolescent psychiatry, psychopharmacology, psychotherapy, digital mental health, epidemiology, prevention, and the organization of mental health services. Recent issues have featured major reviews on digital mental health, the lived experience of trans persons, social determinants of mental health, and big-data approaches in psychiatry.

Editorial Leadership

Editor-in-Chief: Prof. Andrea Fiorillo — listed on the official Wiley journal page (verified October 2026). He is Professor of Psychiatry at the University of Campania "Luigi Vanvitelli", Naples, Italy, and served as President of the European Psychiatric Association in 2026.

Founding/longstanding editor: Prof. Mario Maj — Editor of World Psychiatry from its 2002 launch through the period in which it rose to the top of the psychiatry rankings; former President of the WPA (2008–2011) and of the European Psychiatric Association (2003–2004). Some third-party sources, including Wikipedia, still list Maj as the current editor; this is outdated.

Authors publishing in recent issues include many of the most cited researchers in psychiatry — Paolo Fusar-Poli, Christoph U. Correll, Eduard Vieta, Dan J. Stein, John Torous, Samuele Cortese and others — reflecting the journal's role as a commissioned showcase for field-leading experts.

A Commissioned Journal: How World Psychiatry Differs

World Psychiatry does not operate like a typical high-volume research journal. Its influence comes from a commissioning model: the editors identify the questions that most need authoritative answers and invite the researchers best placed to answer them. A target article is typically followed by invited commentaries from international experts, creating a structured debate in a single issue. The June 2012 issue, for example, carried a review on the classification of feeding and eating disorders for ICD-11 alongside commentaries, plus pieces on the self and schizophrenia, the placebo response, and everyday functioning in schizophrenia — each pairing a lead article with expert responses.

This model explains the journal's unusual citation profile. With only three issues a year and a limited article count, each paper is positioned to shape practice and research agendas. Article types currently visible on the Wiley page include Special Articles (agenda-setting reviews), Research Reports (original studies and meta-analyses), and editorials. Because content is largely invited, the journal functions as a showcase for consensus and debate among field leaders rather than as a general submission venue.

The multilingual editions reinforce this mission. By publishing in Arabic, Chinese, French, Russian, Spanish and Turkish as well as English, the journal reaches clinicians who would otherwise be cut off from the field's most important syntheses — a deliberate choice that matches the WPA's global membership.

Recent Coverage

The journal's recent issues illustrate its agenda-setting role. The September 2026 issue included a bottom-up review of the lived experience of trans persons co-written by experts by experience and academics (Fusar-Poli et al.), an evidence-based atlas of risk and protective factors for psychotic disorders (Aymerich et al.), an umbrella review of mental health disparities in LGBTQIA+ populations (Oliva et al.), a modified-Delphi consensus on GLP-1 receptor agonists in eating disorders (Keshen et al.), and a review of big data in psychiatry (Stein et al.). The May 2026 issue featured a major review of child and adolescent psychiatry (Cortese et al.) and the OASIS1000 prospective study on predicting outcomes in clinical-high-risk psychosis (Logeswaran et al.).

2025 issues carried field-defining pieces on digital mental health (Torous et al.), physical activity as adjunctive treatment (Vancampfort et al.), AI mental-health chatbots (Hua et al.), and personalized management of feeding and eating disorders (Schmidt et al.). The pattern is consistent: topics where clinical practice is moving fast and clinicians need reliable synthesis.

Key Facts

Metric caveat: citation metrics are produced by third-party databases and change with each release. The publisher's own statement — highest Impact Factor in psychiatry for 11 consecutive years — is the only official ranking claim; figures quoted above come from secondary databases and are shown with their vintages.

Landmark Papers

The following highly cited papers were published in World Psychiatry. Every DOI below was verified as resolving through the Crossref API in October 2026. Citation counts are Crossref counts at the time of research.

1. Understanding the burnout experience: recent research and its implications for psychiatry — Christina Maslach & Michael P. Leiter (2016), 15, 103–111. DOI: 10.1002/wps.20311. The definitive modern review of occupational burnout, extending the concept from workplace psychology into psychiatry and public mental health (~3,400 Crossref citations).
2. A network theory of mental disorders — Denny Borsboom (2017), 16, 5–13. DOI: 10.1002/wps.20375. A foundational statement of the network approach, arguing that mental disorders are best understood as causal systems of interacting symptoms rather than reflections of latent diseases (~3,000 citations).
3. Physical illness in patients with severe mental disorders. I. Prevalence, impact of medications and disparities in health care — Marc De Hert et al. (2011), 10, 52–77. DOI: 10.1002/j.2051-5545.2011.tb00014.x. The landmark synthesis documenting the mortality gap in severe mental illness, which became a touchstone for physical-health monitoring in psychiatric services (~2,000 citations).
4. Risks of all-cause and suicide mortality in mental disorders: a meta-review — Edward Chesney, Guy M. Goodwin & Seena Fazel (2014), 13, 153–160. DOI: 10.1002/wps.20128. A meta-review quantifying excess mortality across mental disorders, widely cited in epidemiology and health-policy work (~1,900 citations).
5. Prevalence, incidence and mortality from cardiovascular disease in patients with pooled and specific severe mental illness: a large-scale meta-analysis of 3,211,768 patients and 113,383,368 controls — Christoph U. Correll et al. (2017), 16, 163–180. DOI: 10.1002/wps.20420. One of the largest meta-analyses ever conducted in psychiatry, establishing cardiovascular disease as a leading driver of premature death in severe mental illness (~1,600 citations).
6. The RDoC framework: facilitating transition from ICD/DSM to dimensional approaches that integrate neuroscience and psychopathology — Bruce N. Cuthbert (2014), 13, 28–35. DOI: 10.1002/wps.20087. The key clinical-audience exposition of the US National Institute of Mental Health's Research Domain Criteria project (~1,250 citations).
7. How important are the common factors in psychotherapy? An update — Bruce E. Wampold (2015), 14, 270–277. DOI: 10.1002/wps.20238. An influential reappraisal of the evidence that common factors — alliance, empathy, expectations — drive psychotherapy outcomes (~1,400 citations).
8. The growing field of digital psychiatry: current evidence and the future of apps, social media, chatbots, and virtual reality — John Torous et al. (2021), 20, 318–335. DOI: 10.1002/wps.20883. A field-defining review of digital mental health technologies and their evidence base (~1,150 citations).
9. The social determinants of mental health and disorder: evidence, prevention and recommendations — James B. Kirkbride et al. (2024), 23, 58–90. DOI: 10.1002/wps.21160. A comprehensive evidence synthesis on how social conditions shape mental health, with prevention recommendations (~1,275 citations, still accumulating).

Publishing Information

World Psychiatry is free to read: the full text of every article is openly available on Wiley Online Library and archived in PubMed Central. Wiley does not publicly list an article processing charge for the journal, and no author-facing APC figure could be verified on the publisher's site — the journal should not be described as author-pays. Much of its content is commissioned or invited (target articles, invited commentaries, editorials), so prospective authors should consult the current author guidelines on the Wiley journal page before submitting unsolicited work. The journal is sent free of charge in print to psychiatrists registered through WPA member societies.

For libraries and researchers, the practical implications are straightforward: no subscription is needed to read the journal, and every article carries a Crossref-registered DOI (prefix 10.1002) with full metadata. Because the journal publishes so few articles per year, its per-article citation density is among the highest in medicine — which is precisely what the Impact Factor measures, and why the journal's ranking should be read alongside its unusual, low-volume, commissioned model.

Frequently Asked Questions

What is World Psychiatry?

It is the official journal of the World Psychiatric Association, published by Wiley, and the highest-Impact-Factor journal in psychiatry according to the publisher — a position it has held for 11 consecutive years.

Who publishes World Psychiatry?

Wiley publishes it on behalf of the World Psychiatric Association. It was previously published by Elsevier on the WPA's behalf before transferring to Wiley in 2013.

Is World Psychiatry open access?

Yes, in practical terms: all content is freely accessible on Wiley Online Library and in PubMed Central, at no charge to readers. No author APC is publicly listed by the publisher.

How often is World Psychiatry published?

Triannually — three issues per year.

Who is the editor-in-chief of World Psychiatry?

As of October 2026, Wiley lists Prof. Andrea Fiorillo as Editor-in-Chief. Mario Maj was the founding and longstanding editor; third-party pages that still name him are outdated.

What are the ISSNs of World Psychiatry?

Print ISSN 1723-8617 and online ISSN 2051-5545.

Can anyone submit a paper to World Psychiatry?

Much of the journal's content is commissioned or invited — target articles, invited commentaries and editorials. Prospective authors should read the current author guidelines on the Wiley journal page before submitting unsolicited work.

Where is World Psychiatry indexed?

PubMed/MEDLINE, the Science Citation Index Expanded, the Social Sciences Citation Index, Current Contents (Clinical Medicine and Social & Behavioral Sciences), Scopus and Embase.

Why is World Psychiatry's Impact Factor so high?

The journal publishes a small number of commissioned, agenda-setting reviews and meta-analyses each year rather than a large volume of original research. Highly cited synthesis papers concentrate citations, which drives the Impact Factor — a model closer to an annual review than to a conventional research journal.

Who owns World Psychiatry?

The journal is owned by the World Psychiatric Association; the copyright line on the Wiley page reads "© World Psychiatric Association." Wiley publishes it under contract on the Association's behalf.

Sources

This profile was researched in October 2026 from official sources: the World Psychiatry journal page on Wiley Online Library (editor, ISSNs, aims, access model, Impact Factor claim); the journal's ScienceDirect archive page (2013 transfer to Wiley); the Crossref REST API (landmark-paper metadata, citation counts and DOI verification). Wikipedia's World Psychiatry entry was used only as a secondary cross-check and is flagged where stale (editor listing, Impact Factor vintage). A full list of source URLs is kept with this profile. Metric figures from secondary databases are shown with their vintages and should be re-checked against the Journal Citation Reports and Scopus before citation.