Special Issue of Biopsychosocial Science and Medicine
[formerly Psychosomatic Medicine]
Deadline April 1, 2025
Interpersonal Processes of Biopsychosocial Health: Current and Future Directions
Guest Editors: Kuan-Hua Chen, Joan Monin, Stephanie Wilson, & Youngmee Kim
The quality of social relationships has well-established health risks and benefits, which are independent of other known contributors, such as age, sex, and initial health status. Where interpersonal processes and health are a focus, they are typically examined in a dyad in which one person affects the health of another and vice versa in a close or meaningful relationship, for example, the relationship between spouses.
However, commonly studied dyads such as spouses and parent-child pairs are not the only kind of important social relationship. A dyad’s health may spill over to or be influenced by a third person, for example, a spousal dyad sharing caregiving responsibility for a child or parent. Dynamics of a close or meaningful group such as a family may influence the health of the family’s members, and the effect may vary by family role. Relationship networks at school or work may affect the health of the members through mechanisms such as influencing health behavior, generating interpersonal stressors like conflict or exclusion, or providing social support and belonging. There are also dyadic social relationships that are not often examined for their health effects: for example, marginalized spouses, siblings, grandparent-child, neighbors, or work partners.
Thus, this special issue of Biopsychosocial Science and Medicine (formerly Psychosomatic Medicine) aims to push the boundaries of interpersonal health science to advance our current understanding of the impact of interpersonal processes on biopsychosocial health. Empirical reports as well as theoretical, systematic, empirical (meta-analytic), and methodological reviews will be considered.
Potential topics may include…
- Theoretical contributions that advance the understanding of interpersonal processes in human interactions that involve biopsychosocial health.
- Methodological and statistical advances for cross-sectional or longitudinal data, for the laboratory or in the real world, or for interpersonal groups that allow examination of interpersonal processes in human interactions that involve biopsychosocial health.
- Behavioral, biological, and psychosocial mechanisms in interpersonal processes that account for benefits and harms to individual or group health.
- Multilevel examination of how macro social contexts (e.g., societal or group) affect micro relationships (e.g., dyad or family) to affect biopsychosocial health.
- Interpersonal interventions to promote biopsychosocial health.
Deadlines:
Abstract: April 1, 2025
Full Manuscript: November 15, 2025
Structured abstracts (500 words maximum) summarizing the proposed manuscript (including objectives, methods, results, and conclusions) will be reviewed on a rolling basis. For full consideration, submit abstracts by April 1, 2025, via email to .
Significance to the call, methods, and presence of results (including preliminary results) will be elements of the most successful abstracts. Priority will be given to novel interpersonal models (triads, groups, or networks; understudied dyadic models and contexts).
Full manuscript invitations will be issued by May 1, 2025. Full manuscripts should be submitted through the Biopsychosocial Science and Medicine (formerly Psychosomatic Medicine) journal portal by November 15, 2025. All papers will be sent out for external review, and final acceptance will be handled by the Editors.