Dear Colleagues,

Our journal is pleased to publish a commemorative issue in honor of Professor Elliot S. Gershon in anticipation of his 79th birthday.

Dr. Gershon’s career has straddled the molecular revolution in psychiatric genetics, helping to propel the field from the realm of family, twin, and adoption studies to that of genome-wide association studies, copy number variants, and next-generation sequencing. During this five-decade long revolution, Dr. Gershon led research that produced many key advancements in our understanding of psychiatric genetics, contributed his wisdom and leadership to important scientific and professional societies, and mentored scores of young scientists and clinicians, many of whom have themselves developed into leaders in the field of psychiatric genetics.

Thanks in no small part to Dr. Gershon’s influence, the field of psychiatric genetics has matured into a major contributor to our burgeoning understanding of the root causes of mental illness. From its foundation in genetic epidemiology, the field has grown into an increasingly molecular enterprise, drawing from rapid technological developments in genomics, genotyping, DNA sequencing, and bioinformatics. Throughout this exciting time, Dr. Gershon has contributed to nearly 400 papers and four books, with nearly 30,000 citations.

Dr. Gershon received his MD from Harvard Medical School in 1965 and completed his psychiatric residency training at The Massachusetts Mental Health Center in 1969. He served as a postdoctoral fellow at the National Institute of Mental Health Intramural Program from 1969-1971. He established and was Director of the research program of the Jerusalem Mental Health Center Ezrath Nashim in Israel from 1971 to1974. After returning to NIMH in 1974, he remained there for another 24 years, during which he founded and built the Neurogenetics Branch into a major player in the field. He retired from the US Public Health Service and moved to the University of Chicago in 1998, to chair the Department of Psychiatry, where he remains Foundations Fund Professor of Psychiatry and Human Genetics. Among many honors, he received the Lifetime Achievement Award from the International Society for Psychiatric Genetics in 2006 and the Anna-Monika Foundation Prize for Research in Depression in 1979 and again in 2005.

In honor of Dr. Gershon’s many contributions to our field, this commemorative issue welcomes previously unpublished manuscripts from original work or reviews in the field of psychiatric genetics. We hope to receive submissions before 30 May 2019. Manuscripts will be published online on an ongoing basis after processing.

We look forward to receiving your submission!

Professor Francis J. McMahon

Professor Chunyu Liu

Guest Editors

Submission Deadline: 30 May 2019

Online Submission

Manuscripts should be submitted online through Hapres Online Submission System. Please visit Guide for Authors before submitting a manuscript. Authors are encouraged to submit a paper as soon as it is ready and don’t need to wait until the deadline. Submissions will be sent to peer-review in order of arrival. Accepted papers will be published continuously in Journal of Psychiatry and Brain Science and then gathered together on the special issue webpage. We welcome Research articles, Review papers and Short Communications. For planned papers, a title and short abstract (about 100 words) can be sent to the Editorial Office for announcement on this website.

See Papers Published in This Special Issue (5 papers)