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Abstract
Editorial
The new BioMed Central online journal on Child and Adolescent Psychiatry and Mental
Health is a very welcome contribution to the field of child and adolescent psychiatry
and an important step forward to spread scientific information related to issues of
child and adolescent mental health.
For many years the Acta Paedopsychiatrica (founded by Professor Tramer in Switzerland
and published as the 'Zeitschrift für Kinderpsychiatrie' 1934–1952 and then as 'Acta
Paedopsychiatrica', 1953–1994) was the "The Publishing Organ for the Official Bulletin
of the IACAPAP, the International Association for Child and Adolescent Psychiatry
and Allied Professions". As an official organ, the Acta Paedopsychiatrica served many
purposes. It was a "multilingual" journal where papers in English, French and German
were published. The abstracts were written in four languages including Spanish. The
information from IACAPAP included proceedings from the Association's international
congresses and other news as well. Thematic issues covering topics of special interests
were published on a regular basis. One of these, the Acta Paedopsychiatrica vol 35.
Fasc. 4–8 p. 97–248 from 1968, presented an overview of the research and current opinions
on Autism Infantum in those days. Of special interest is that Leo Kanner was the author
of the first chapter presenting the Kanner Syndrome while Hans Asperger was the author
of the second chapter describing his syndrome.
Today, the IACAPAP Bulletin, accessible on the IACAPAP web page [1], gives the official
IACAPAP information while an equally easily available scientific journal is lacking.
For this reason, the new online journal "Child and Adolescent Psychiatry and Mental
Health" will be of special importance for scientific purposes in our field. Being
an open access journal, and therefore freely available via the internet, it will give
child and adolescent psychiatrists and mental health workers all over the world unique
opportunities and without the barrier of subscription rates to follow the frontiers
of knowledge and experiences in our disciplines. This is even more important for clinicians
and researchers in developing countries where economy may restrict their chances to
subscribe for scientific journals.
Stockholm and Karolinska Institutet May 2007
This is an Open Access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons
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