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.
Interested in submitting an article to AJO
Learn about current editorial policies for AJO and how to submit manuscripts for publication.
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.
Establishing a Path to Unity: Recommendations for the Biden/Harris Administration [2021]
Suicide Risk Assessments: Examining Influences on Clinicians’ Professional Judgment [2015]
Consensus Statement on Group Care for Children and Adolescents [2014]
Remember… your membership to the Global Alliance gives you access to ALL of the articles in AJO!
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 .
Unlimited electronic access to AJO articles is included in your Global Alliance membership!
View pricing for individual or institutional print subscriptions.
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Subscribe to the RSS feed for AJO
Opt-in to receive alerts from AJO:
- Log in at psycnet.apa.org.
- Click on “My PsycNET” on the far right of the blue bar at the top of the page.
- Click the second tab, “PsycALERTS.”
- Click “Add Journal Alert.”
- 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 .
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
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 P. Kilmer, PhD
Professor of Psychology, University of North Carolina at Charlotte
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 Coker
University of New Haven
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
Virginia 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
Kenneth Pargament
Bowling Green State University
Sita G. Patel
Palo Alto UniversityGilbert 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.