Mental health problems commonly co-occur with physical illness in general hospitals, yet key clinical presentations remain understudied. This Collection will emphasize complex comorbidity patterns and high-burden presentations in general hospital settings, including functional somatic disorders and medically unexplained symptoms, across emergency, inpatient and outpatient care. An essential innovation is the integration of insights from psychiatry, psychosomatic medicine, internal medicine, surgery, nursing and health services research to advance system-level models of assessment, referral and integrated care pathways within general hospitals. Unlike traditional special issues focused on single disease areas or liaison services, this Collection foregrounds cross-disciplinary models of care that can be implemented across departments and levels of acuity. We encourage submissions reporting original clinical or health services research, intervention trials, implementation studies of integrated or collaborative care models, and high-quality systematic reviews; qualitative and mixed-methods studies that illuminate patient and clinician perspectives in general hospital settings are also welcome.

Keywords:

consultation-liaison psychiatry; psychosomatic medicine; comorbidity; functional somatic disorders; medically unexplained symptoms; chronic physical illness; general hospital; integrated care; collaborative care; health services research

Mental health disorders among children and adolescents have emerged as a major global public health concern, with increasing prevalence of anxiety, depression, behavioral disorders, sleep disturbances, neurodevelopmental conditions, and technology-associated psychosocial challenges. Simultaneously, rapid advances in digital health technologies, artificial intelligence (AI), mobile applications, telehealth platforms, virtual reality, wearable devices, and digital therapeutics are transforming the assessment, monitoring, and management of pediatric mental health conditions. This Collection aims to provide a multidisciplinary platform for high-quality research focusing on digital innovations and technology-assisted approaches in child and adolescent mental health. The Collection welcomes original research, systematic reviews, meta-analyses, clinical studies, implementation research, and policy-focused papers addressing digital mental health interventions, AI-assisted screening tools, telepsychiatry, digital behavioral therapies, sleep and mental health interactions, neurodevelopmental disorders, school-based digital interventions, and ethical considerations related to digital mental healthcare. The Collection particularly encourages interdisciplinary contributions from psychiatry, psychology, pediatrics, neuroscience, public health, dentistry, behavioral sciences, biomedical engineering, and data science to advance evidence-based digital mental healthcare for younger populations.

Keywords: telehealth, digital therapeutics, AI-assisted screening tools, implementation science, ethics in digital health, sleep disorders, global mental health