Community Mental Health Journal
The Community Mental Health Journal is the official journal of the AACP. It is devoted to the evaluation and improvement of public sector mental health services for people affected by severe mental disorders, serious emotional disturbances and/or addictions.
AACP members act as editors and contributing authors to journal articles.
Look inside:

The Community Mental Health Journal focuses on the needs of people experiencing serious forms of psychological distress, as well as the structures established to address those needs.
Areas of particular interest include critical examination of current paradigms of diagnosis and treatment, socio-structural determinants of mental health, social hierarchies within the public mental health systems, and the intersection of public mental health programs and social/racial justice and health equity.
While this is the journal of the American Association for Community Psychiatry, we welcome manuscripts reflecting research from a range of disciplines on recovery-oriented services, public health policy, clinical delivery systems, advocacy, and emerging and innovative practices.
In 2021:
- articles were downloaded over 500,000 times.
- received over 800 submissions
- Impact Factor for Community Mental Health Journal is 2.469.
- CiteScore for Community Mental Health Journal is 3.0.
Hard copies of the journal are also available.
For AACP members, the price is $40 / year
We hope you enjoy the journal!
CMHJ Editors
Sheldon R. Roen, Ph.D., 1965-1968
Lennin A. Baler, Ph.D., S.D., 1968-1978
James A. Ciarlo, Ph.D., 1979-1981
Herbert Diamond, M.D., 1979-1986
Allan Beigel, M.D., 1982-1987
David L. Cutler, M.D., 1987-2005 *
Bentson H. McFarland, M.D., Ph.D., 2005-2008
Jacqueline Maus Feldman, M.D., 2008-2019
Sandra Steingard, M.D., 2019 to present
* How the CMHJ came to fall under the auspices of the AACP (part of an email from David Cutler to Gordon Clark, Founding President, on 3/15/23):
"I was asked to be editor of CMHJ around 1986 by the board of the National Council of Community Mental Health Centers. I'm sure you recall many many years ago I was also on the AACP board. It was I who back in about 1990 arranged for the AACP to co-sponsor the journal with the National Council. Part of that agreement was AACP agreed to make a journal subscription part of the membership dues thereby resulting in a win for both Human Sciences Press (financial) and AACP (it's very own academic journal). Unfortunately, The National Council could not afford to include the journal in its membership dues which later led to their dropping out and leaving the AACP solely sponsoring the journal. Over the years Human Sciences was bought by Plenum Press and then Springer bought Plenum I remained editor and essentially was in complete control of the journal. Before I retired from OHSU in 2005 I promoted Bentson McFarland who had been associate editor to be editor in chief. Bentson was an MD PhD (biostatistics) professor at OHSU and someone who had not only been extremely helpful due his multiple skills and expertise but was an ideal editor who strengthened the review process and also digitaslized the journal."