Calls for submissions
Special Issue: Misinformation and Disinformation in Psychiatry and Neurology: Challenges in the Digital Age
Misinformation and disinformation have become increasingly important challenges for psychiatry and neurology. Social media platforms, online communities, influencers, rapidly evolving artificial intelligence tools, and other digital sources have fundamentally changed how patients and the public access, interpret, and share information about mental and neurological health. While these developments have created unprecedented opportunities for education and support, they have also facilitated the rapid dissemination of inaccurate, misleading, or deliberately false claims about psychiatric and neurological disorders and their treatment.
Such information may influence how individuals understand their symptoms, approach self-diagnosis, perceive the causes and prognosis of disorders, and make decisions about seeking professional help or accepting recommended treatments. Misleading narratives may contribute to stigma, inappropriate self-treatment, delayed help-seeking, treatment discontinuation, and distrust of healthcare professionals and scientific evidence. At the same time, oversimplification and overmedicalization of everyday experiences may shape public perceptions of diagnostic categories and contribute to misconceptions about mental and neurological disorders.
Pharmacotherapy in Psychiatry and Neurology invites submissions to a Special Issue devoted to the nature, mechanisms, dissemination, and clinical consequences of misinformation and disinformation across psychiatry and neurology.
We particularly welcome contributions addressing misinformation and disinformation related to specific psychiatric and neurological conditions, including, but not limited to:
- depression and antidepressant treatment;
- schizophrenia and other psychotic disorders;
- bipolar disorder;
- attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder (ADHD);
- autism spectrum disorder;
- anxiety and trauma-related disorders;
- eating disorders;
- substance use disorders;
- dementia and other neurocognitive disorders;
- headache;
- epilepsy;
- Parkinson's disease and other movement disorders;
- multiple sclerosis and other neurological conditions.
We also encourage cross-cutting contributions examining topics such as mental health misinformation on social media; self-diagnosis and diagnostic misinformation; myths and misconceptions surrounding psychopharmacology and neurological treatments; treatment refusal and non-adherence; stigma and misleading representations of psychiatric and neurological disorders; health influencers and online patient communities; misinformation surrounding complementary and alternative treatments; the role of generative artificial intelligence and large language models in producing or amplifying inaccurate health information; cognitive, emotional, and social mechanisms underlying susceptibility to misinformation; and strategies for preventing or counteracting misinformation through debunking, prebunking, digital health literacy, clinician–patient communication, and public health interventions.
Submissions may include original research, systematic or scoping reviews, narrative reviews, and other article types within the scope of the journal. Interdisciplinary contributions integrating psychiatry or neurology with psychology, communication science, public health, digital health, or computational approaches are particularly encouraged.
Through this Special Issue, we aim to provide a comprehensive picture of how misinformation is reshaping the understanding and management of psychiatric and neurological disorders and to identify practical strategies through which clinicians, researchers, professional organizations, and healthcare systems can respond to this rapidly evolving challenge.
Topic Editors:
Błażej Misiak
Department of Psychiatry, Wroclaw Medical University, Poland
Marta Waliszewska-Prosół
Department of Neurology, Wroclaw Medical University, Poland
Submission deadline: 31 March 2027