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Home › Publications › American Journal of Orthopsychiatry (AJO)

American Journal of Orthopsychiatry (AJO)

The American Journal of Orthopsychiatry (AJO) is a bimonthly peer-reviewed journal published by the American Psychological Association.

Call for Papers

Global Alliance for Behavioral Health and Social Justice: Looking Back, Moving Forward

Submit a manuscript to this special issue of The American Journal of Orthopsychiatry honoring the 100th anniversary of the Global Alliance (formerly the American Orthopsychiatric Association.) Download the Call for Papers.

Read the latest edition

View the table of contents for the latest edition of AJO.

Remember: Global Alliance membership gives you free access to all articles in AJO.

Meet an AJO Researcher

Get insights from the researchers behind the work in our Meet an AJO Researcher blog series.

About AJO

AJO is dedicated to informing public policy and professional practice and to the expansion of knowledge relating to mental health and human development from a multidisciplinary and inter-professional perspective.

Consistent with Global Alliance’s mission, the journal publishes articles that clarify, challenge, or reshape the prevailing understanding of factors necessary for a humane and just society.

How to submit an article

Submissions are evaluated with respect to the importance and timeliness of the topic, scholarly and methodological rigor, interdisciplinary perspective, and clarity of implications for research, behavioral health practice and administration, and social policy.

For more information about the scope of the journal, criteria, and procedures for selection of manuscripts for publication, manuscript submission instructions, and editorial policies, please review the Instructions to Authors.

We invite authors to visit the American Journal of Orthopsychiatry manuscript submission site to learn about current editorial policies for AJO and to submit manuscripts for publication.

If you have questions about a manuscript that has been submitted or that you are interested in submitting, please contact gro.e1695865036citsu1695865036jhb@O1695865036JA1695865036.

How to subscribe to AJO

Unlimited electronic access to AJO articles is included in your Global Alliance membership!

View pricing for individual or institutional print subscriptions.

How to access AJO
  1. Log in at my.apa.org.
  2. The products and benefits of your subscription (including access to AJO) are listed under the “Subscriptions” section.

Logging in for the first time?
Your APA username is the email address that you used to sign up for your Global Alliance membership. The first time logging in you will need to create a password, using the “Forgot your password or email/username?” link. This will take you to the next page in which you will enter your email address in the field under “I don’t know my password.” The system will email you a link to create your password. If your email is associated with a Google account, you may also log in using Google.

If you need assistance with APA’s electronic products, please contact gro.a1695865036pa@ec1695865036ivres1695865036remot1695865036suc1695865036.

How to get AJO notifications

Subscribe to the RSS feed for AJO

Opt-in to receive alerts from AJO:

  1. Log in at psycnet.apa.org.
  2. Click on “My PsycNET” on the far right of the blue bar at the top of the page.
  3. Click the second tab, “PsycALERTS.”
  4. Click “Add Journal Alert.”
  5. Find AJO, checkmark the box to the right of the journal, then scroll to the bottom of the page and click on “Subscribe.”

What does AJO Publish?

The journal is published 6 times a year, including special issues, with theoretical, policy-analytic, and empirical articles.

Contemporary topics in AJO’s topical scope include, but are not limited to:

  • public behavioral health and prevention
  • institutional reform
  • causes and solutions to behavioral healthcare disparities
  • adaption of behavioral health methods to the needs of racial, ethnic, cultural and other minority groups
  • responses to natural and human-made disasters
  • immigrants and refugees
  • underserved behavioral health populations
  • protection of vulnerable people
  • sociocultural dimensions of behavioral health problems

Special Sections

AJO occasionally invites leading scholars to edit special sections or issues on topics of particular interest.  These issues usually contain articles solicited by the guest editor, who coordinates initial reviews of the manuscripts that are submitted in response to these invitations. If you have an idea for a special section or issue, email gro.e1695865036citsu1695865036jhb@O1695865036JA1695865036.

Social Innovations Feature

AJO includes a unique magazine-in-a-journal. This feature is called Social Innovations and is intended to promote conversation about strategies for establishing new social settings and changing social norms to create more auspicious circumstances for mental health promotion. Scholars are welcome to submit articles for Social Innovations.

AJO Editors

Co-Editors

Kendell L. Coker, PhD, JD

Assistant Professor, Connecticut College

Read Bio

Kendell Coker, PhD, JD is an assistant professor at Connecticut College in New London, CT. He previously was an Associate Professor in the Department of Psychology and Department of Allied Health at University of New Haven. He received his Ph.D. in Clinical Psychology with a specialization in Forensic Psychology from Nova Southeastern University. He received his clinical postdoctoral training through Northwestern University at the Cook County Juvenile Court Clinic, where he conducted sentencing evaluations on youth involved with the Department of Probation. He then received his J.D. from Loyola University Chicago School of Law, where he graduated with cum laude honors and was an entering Health Law scholarship recipient and also served as the Editor-in-Chief for the law school’s Health Law and Policy Review, Annals of Health Law. He served as a council member on the Juvenile Defense Resource Institute at Northwestern University School of Law, which was a project designed to strategize ways to reduce recidivism and improve legal representation of juveniles involved in the criminal justice system. Dr. Coker also was a NIDA T-32 postdoctoral fellow at Yale University Department of Psychiatry’s Forensic Drug Diversion Program (FORDD).

Ryan Kilmer

Ryan P. Kilmer, PhD

Professor of Psychology, University of North Carolina at Charlotte

Read Bio

Ryan Kilmer, PhD is a Professor of Psychology and Chair of the Department of Psychological Sciences at the University of North Carolina at Charlotte. He received his PhD in Clinical Psychology from the University of Rochester. He identifies as a clinical-community psychologist, with primary professional interests in children and families. Specifically, his interests focus on the development of children at-risk and their adjustment to trauma, as well as the use of evaluative research to guide system change, program refinement, service delivery, and policy. A former President of the Global Alliance for Behavioral Health and Social Justice and an AJO Editorial Board member since 2011, he is a Fellow of the American Psychological Association’s Division 27 (Society for Community Research and Action) and of APA. He is also former Director of the Social Aspects of Health Initiative for the College of Liberal Arts and Sciences at UNC Charlotte, and was the inaugural Senior Faculty Fellow for Faculty Engagement at the University’s Office of Urban Research and Community Engagement.


Read APA’s conversation with the former editors of AJO, Jill D. McLeigh and William Spaulding.

Editorial Assistant

Sharon Crout 
Retired from Clemson University

Editorial Board

Elisabeth Backe-Hansen 
Norweigian Institute for Social Research

Ellen Bassuk 
Center For Social Innovation, Needham, MA

Rami Benbenishty 
Bar Ilan University

John Brekke 
University of Southern California

Kendell L. Coker 
Connecticut College

Cyleste C. Collins 
Cleveland State University

Heather Corliss 
San Diego State University

Christopher F. Drescher 
Augusta University

Amy L. Dworsky 
Chapin Hall at the University of Chicago

Eric Elbogen 
University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill School of Medicine

Joyce Epstein 
Johns Hopkins University

Eric Evans 
University of Nebraska-Lincoln   

Larry M. Gant 
University of Michigan at Ann Arbor

V. Gil-Rivas
University of North Carolina at Charlotte

Devon Emerson Hinton
Harvard Medical School

Debra Hope 
University of Nebraska-Lincoln

Matthew Howard 
University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill

Iheoma Iruka 
University of Nebraska

Ryan P. Kilmer 
University of North Carolina at Charlotte

Mimi M. Kim 
Duke University

Ibrahim Aref Kira 
Center for Cumulative Trauma Studies

Roger Levesque
Indiana University

Terri Lewis 
University of Colorado

Nancy Liu 
University of California, Berkeley

Bob Lonne 
University of New England

Brinton Lykes 
Boston College

Kathryn Magruder 
Medical University of South Carolina

Michael McCart 
Oregon Social Learning Center 

James McDonell
Clemson University

David Moxley 
University of Alaska Anchorage

Virginia Murphy-Berman 
Skidmore College

Kim Oates
University of Sydney

Ellen Olshansky 
University of Southern California

Sita G. Patel
Palo Alto University

Gilbert Reyes 
Fielding Graduate University

Stefan E. Schulenberg 
The University of Mississippi

Anna Skosireva  University of Ottawa 

Victor Strasburger 
University of New Mexico School of Medicine

Cris Sullivan 
Michigan State University

Tony Tan 
University of South Florida

Martie P. Thompson 
Clemson University

Luis Vargas 
University of New Mexico

Weijun Wang
University of Buffalo

The American Journal of Orthopsychiatry is published by the American Psychological Association (APA), effective with the 2014 volume.

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