Emotional health is a state of positive psychological functioning and is vital for living a life of balance and contentment. People who are emotionally healthy are in control of their moods and behaviour, which helps them to meet the challenges of career difficulties, family conflict, or life dilemmas. However, many individuals have experienced emotional disturbances and disorders during their life. Emotional disorders are highly intertwined with leading causes of illness and disability, such as heart disease or stroke, leading to a high family and social burden due to increased healthcare costs. Therefore, it is an important public health issue to encourage more research into the field of mental health.
It is well established that mind-body practices, as an alternative and complementary treatment, have shown beneficial effects in the alleviation of anxiety, depression, and other psychopathologies. Recently, considerable efforts have been devoted to the field of mind-body training-induced emotional effects, to unravel the significance of alternative and complementary techniques in the prevention and treatment of emotional disturbances and disorders. These mind-body practices include Tai Chi Chuan, yoga, Baduanjin, and Qigong. Given the accessibility of mind-body practices among individuals of all ages, there is potential in the application of regimens with empirical evidences to prevent and manage mental health disorders. Currently, mind-body integrative techniques have been utilised in the general healthy population, as well as in patients with emotional disorders.
In this Special Issue, we call for contributions on the effect of mind-body practices on emotional health in both healthy populations and patients with physical or mental health problems. These effects are expected to be emotion-related outcomes, including but not limited to positive mood, depression, and anxiety. Longitudinal studies or interventions are encouraged. We encourage all studies that advance our understanding of the association between mind-body practices and human emotions and offer new insights for developing new strategies for treating emotional disorders. We welcome both original research and review articles.
Potential topics include but are not limited to the following:
- Intervention of mind-body practices on patients with emotional disorders
- The effects of mind-body practices in promoting emotional health in healthy populations
- Longitudinal studies on mind-body practices on depression in adult and elderly populations
- The interactive effects of cognitive ability and emotional processing induced by acute exercise of mind-body practices
- Mind-body training alleviating emotional disturbances such as examination anxiety, stress, and depressive symptoms in children and adolescents
- Negative emotions alleviated by mind-body practices in illnesses such as chronic heart disease, digestive tract disease, breast disease, cardiovascular disease, and fibromyalgia
- The influence of acute or chronic mind-body exercise on physical or mental pain-induced negative emotions
- Brain imaging techniques used to investigate the neural mechanisms underlying mind-body practice-induced emotional health
- Mind-body practices optimising brain functions related to emotional circuits
- The effects of exercise, mindfulness, or mind-body practices in reshaping brain structures, including amygdala, thalamus, cingulate cortex, and frontal cortex
- Reviews and perspectives on the effect of mind-body practice on emotional health
