Mental health is integral to achieving the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), as it intersects with all the global targets for Agenda 2030. The inclusion of mental health within Agenda 2030 reflects its importance for achieving global well-being and equity. However, the complex relationships between mental health and the SDGs are often underexplored. For instance, poor mental health can hinder educational attainment, economic productivity, and resilience to environmental crises, while systemic inequities, climate change, and conflict exacerbate mental health challenges globally.

Despite growing global commitments, the integration of mental health into development agendas remains fragmented. Research is often siloed, focusing on either mental health outcomes or SDG targets, rather than exploring their interdependencies. Furthermore, there is limited understanding of how mental health interventions can accelerate SDG achievements or how progress on the SDGs can promote mental well-being. Addressing these gaps is essential to building inclusive, sustainable communities where mental health and development reinforce one another.

This collection aims to provide a platform for interdisciplinary research that examines the interrelationships between mental health and the SDGs. We welcome studies that investigate how mental health issues influence progress on the SDGs and how development efforts can address mental health disparities. This collection will offer critical insights for policymakers, practitioners, and researchers working to integrate mental health into global development strategies.

Key Themes Include (but are not limited to):

• Mental Health and Overall Health and Well-Being: Exploring mental health as a core component of health and well-being, including the integration of mental health services into primary healthcare.

• Educational Outcomes and Mental Health: Investigating the effects of mental health on learning, school attendance, and academic performance, and vice versa.

• Gender Equality and Mental Health: Examining the mental health implications of gender disparities, violence, and empowerment.

• Climate Change and Mental Health: Assessing the psychological impacts of climate-related events and the role of mental health in building climate resilience.

• Mental Health Inequities and SDG Progress: Exploring how disparities in access to mental health care affect progress on the SDGs, especially for marginalized groups.

• Resilience and Sustainable Development: Identifying protective factors and community-based strategies that enhance mental health and promote sustainable development.

• Digital Innovations and Mental Health in SDG Achievement: Evaluating the role of technology in addressing mental health challenges within development contexts.

• Mental Health Policy and the SDGs: Analyzing policies that integrate mental health into national and international development agendas.

• Youth Mental Health and SDGs: Investigating the intersection of youth mental health with education, employment, and civic participation.

• Intersectionality in Mental Health and SDGs: Exploring how intersecting identities (e.g., age, gender, socio-economic status, ethnicity) influence mental health outcomes and development goals.

Keywords: Mental Health and Sustainable Development Goals; Global Mental Health and SDGs; Mental Health Equity; Climate and Mental Health; Resilience and Well-being; Mental Health Policy and Advocacy; Education and Mental Health; Gender and Mental Health; Vulnerable Populations; Interdisciplinary Development and Mental Health.

This Collection supports and amplifies research related to all the SDGs.

The COVID-19 pandemic has greatly altered the way we live, work and socialise and continues to impact global mental health and wellbeing. Post the COVID 19 pandemic, and in the context of increasing environmental disasters due to climate change, there is a growing importance to be prepared and effectively deal with future adversities and threats. In this respect, understanding aspects of positive psychological capacities that can access and develop individual and community strengths are gaining importance. There is a growing body of evidence from positive psychology on a broader set of positive attributes/ resources such as self-efficacy, resilience, hope, optimism, sense of coherence, autonomy, resourcefulness, identity, hope, religiosity/spirituality and life valuation as critical indicators of mental health and wellbeing.

Positive psychology has inspired many fields of research including education, health, workplace and sports, to better capture strengths and capacities that can be measured and developed to improve, health, wellbeing and productivity. However, a significant pitfall of this research has been in discipline silos, published in discipline specific journals with limited access to researchers from other fields, impairing cross-disciplinary learnings across fields. For example, empirical evidence from the field of positive organisation behaviour has suggested psychological capital (PsyCap) as an higher-order construct that includes hope, self-efficacy, resilience and optimism to be associated with workplace burnout, wellbeing and satisfaction.

This collection will provide a platform for researcher across the field of education, health and workplace to publish articles related to measuring and developing psychological capacities to improve mental health and wellbeing. This collection aims to promote exchange of ideas and knowledge between disciplines to better understand, measure and develop psychological capacities to successfully address mental health concerns and wellbeing in the era of climate change and the COVID-19 aftermath.

Keywords: Psychological capacities, Resilience, Positive Psychology, Mental health and Wellbeing.