Editorial: <i>Mental Health and Digital Technologies</i> : looking to the future

EMDR= Eye Movement Desensitisation and Reprocessing; andMHDT= Mental Health and Digital Technologies.This issue represents the fourth and final instalment of Mental Health and Digital Technologies (MHDT) for 2025. During this year, the journal has seen a significant increase in submissions from across the world.In 2025, we have so far accepted manuscripts from authors across the globe with author affiliations across approximately 100 institutions (correct as of early October 2025). These include original research articles, practitioner articles, research protocols and a small number of digital showcases. While the majority of our submissions to date have come from Western countries, we are pleased to see the journal generating increasing global interest from readers, authors and reviewers. While tracking the precise number of reads and article downloads is challenging across multiple platforms, we are pleased to report that MHDT articles are already receiving citations.Launching MHDT and expanding to four issues this year would not have been possible without the support and encouragement of a number of people who are deserving of thanks. Firstly, the editors would like to thank all members of the Editorial Advisory Board (listed at the bottom of this editorial) for their unwavering commitment and contributions in helping establish the journal and in supporting its development.Special thanks are also due to Jo Sharrocks, our Senior Commissioning Editor at Emerald, who has been instrumental to the MHDT’s establishment and success from its inception, to Gauri Naik of our Journal Editorial Office for handling pre-acceptance and production queries, and to Uday Bhan for handling post-acceptance queries and budgeting. The journal’s continued growth would not be possible without such an excellent team to support it.In addition, we would like to extend our sincere gratitude to all reviewers who have contributed their time to enhancing the quality of manuscripts recommended for publication in MHDT. Your feedback has been greatly appreciated by editors and authors alike.While we are proud of the MHDT’s initial progress, we remain committed to its ongoing development and remain true to our original vision – to establish the journal as a publication of interest to a broad range of stakeholders and interested parties across this diverse sector, to enable representation, to create a space for innovation in the communication of digital mental health innovation development and evaluation and to promote the practices of open science. We continue to welcome contributions from authors across the field of digital mental health across a range of publication types, details of which can be found on the journal website.In addition, and following the successful publication of the journal’s first special issue this year, we also plan for further special issues in the coming years, including next year, for which calls for papers will be published on the journal website. The first of these in 2026 will focus on the use of Artificial Intelligence for Mental Health Support and Wellbeing and will be guest edited by Dr Natasha Tonge. The second upcoming special issue follows our commitment to providing a platform for broadening representation and will address digital mental health provision in low- and middle-income countries, to be guest edited by Dr Nadeem Gire. We have already received exciting proposals to follow these special editions.The editors are also pleased to announce that MHDT is now at a stage where we can begin to file for indexing in a number of major databases. We hope to be able to provide a positive update on this exciting news shortly.In this final issue for 2025, we are pleased to present 11 articles. These include original research articles, systematic reviews and meta-analyses, and practitioner articles. Of the research articles published in this issue, these include a report on a research study exploring robotic solutions for home healthcare; an exploration of whether media may modify college student attitudes, a mediation-moderation model of connectedness and screen time in the context of online gaming, modality preferences and service utilisation trends in mental health outpatient care post-COVID-19, a report on correlations of mental health and chatbot adoption among Chinese university students, and an examination of the longitudinal effects of online gaming and in-person social networks on mental health outcomes. We additionally present two research articles in this issue focused on co-design and user-experience: firstly, the co-design of a digital nutrition intervention for individuals with severe mental illness utilising the behaviour change wheel, and secondly a report on the usability, feasibility and initial outcomes of a virtual-reality EMDR treatment for specific phobias. Davey and colleagues present a systematic review and meta-analysis focusing on internet-based third-wave interventions for the reduction of stress in children and adolescents with chronic conditions, and Xi et al. present a systematic review of means to promote children’s mental health education through digital technologies. Last, but by no means least, this issue contains a practitioner article considering clinical perspectives on embracing technology for mental health purposes in India. We are sure that these latest papers will be of interest to our readers.Finally, we would like to thank you, our readers, for your engagement with the journal and its content. We are excited by MHDT’s progress in its first two years as well as our plans for the journal’s future. We wish you a restful 2025 holiday season and all the best for 2026.Editorial Board Members:Rosie AllenUniversity of Greater Manchester, UKMelvin BradleyMental Health Independent Support Team (MhIST), UKJerome CarsonUniversity of Greater Manchester, UKNadeem GireUniversity of Central Lancashire, UKTerry HanleyUniversity of Manchester, UKMonika KornackaUniwersytet SWPS, PolandNicky LidbetterThe Big Life Group, UKTheo OingUI Researcher and Designer – Freelance and Infinite Analytics, TN, USASamiullah ParachaXian Jiaotong-Liverpool University, ChinaAnjana Gauri PendyalaSchool of Arts and Sciences, Ahmedabad University, Ahmedabad, Gujarat, IndiaLexine StapinskiMatilda Centre for Research in Mental Health and Substance Use, University of Sydney, AustraliaNatasha A. TongeGeorge Mason University, USAMahimna VyasUniversity of Greater Manchester, UKAndrew WilliamsUniversity of Greater Manchester, UKMichelle WrightNorthern Illinois University, USA