Sandra G. Resnick, PhD, is an associate professor of psychiatry at the Yale School of Medicine and deputy director at the VA Northeast Program Evaluation Center.
Dr. Resnick received her PhD from Indiana University-Purdue University Indianapolis.
Tell us a bit about your background: What is your area of research? What is your most recent journal-editing experience?
As a psychologist in the interdisciplinary field of psychiatric rehabilitation (PSR), I use data to help shape person-centered services that promote meaningful lives for individuals with significant psychiatric disabilities. In my role in VA Central Office, I provide national program evaluation of vocational rehabilitation services for veterans with psychiatric disabilities and co-lead a national effort to implement measurement based care across VA mental health services.
Over the next few years we'll be implementing patient-reported outcome measures as part of measurement based care for PSR services, which has enormous potential to change the way we deliver PSR services.
I've been an ad hoc reviewer for over 35 journals, and have been on the editorial board of Psychiatric Rehabilitation Journal since 2005. During that time, I coedited a special issue of the journal on PSR in the VA.
Briefly, what are your main priorities? For example, how will you grow readership, what type of scholarship would you like to see in the journal, and what kind of content are you hoping to attract?
As editors, Judith Cook and Kim Mueser have done an amazing job of strengthening the foundation of the journal, attracting great content, and increasing the impact factor. I hope to continue these efforts and seek to attract strong scholarly work with direct implications to practice and policy for services for people with psychiatric disabilities.
I consider myself to be an educator above all, and so my hope is to help use the journal to disseminate information and help others grow. Kim and Judith's success in growing the journal has given me the freedom to start thinking about strategies to help bridge the science-to-practice gap in several ways: by translating findings for practitioners and lay audiences, expanding social media to promote conversations, and developing mentoring programs to attract new authors and reviewers.
Why is this journal important for the field? What is its relevance to society/public health? What are the hot issues in your area right now?
Psychiatric Rehabilitation Journal is the flagship academic journal for the field of PSR and our academic home. As a young scholar, I was so excited to publish my first manuscript in Psychiatric Rehabilitation Journal in 2001.
Although an APA journal, Psychiatric Rehabilitation Journal is interdisciplinary and has a wide audience. We provide the evidence that people with psychiatric disabilities can live satisfying and meaningful lives and that psychiatric rehabilitation services are critical in making this happen.
Do you have plans for a special issue or changes to the editorial process? Are you making any changes?
The biggest change to the editorial process is in the structure of the editorial team. Although we are celebrating Psychiatric Rehabilitation Journal's 40th anniversary this year, Psychiatric Rehabilitation Journal is relatively new to APA, and so the editorial structure is changing to be more consistent with other APA journals.
I am delighted to have two exceptional Associate Editors, Michelle Salyers and David Roe, who will be serving with me.
Also, consistent with our goal to help translate findings for a larger audience, I will be implementing APA guidance to include translational abstracts and public significance statements in submissions — tools that will facilitate the dissemination of the research to a broader audience through different channels, such as social media.
Editor Spotlight features interviews with the newly-appointed editors of APA Journals.
APA Journals produces an array of scholarly journals that cover the spectrum of modern psychology and feature the latest research in the field.
Psychiatric Rehabilitation Journal publishes peer reviewed articles and reports describing innovative programs and practice in rehabilitation and recovery and is intended for readers with an interest in the field of psychiatric rehabilitation.