--- name: the-lancet-psychiatry description: Use when targeting The Lancet Psychiatry or deciding whether a psychiatry or mental-health study fits this venue. Encodes the journal's fit, the clinical-trial, population, and policy evidence bar, reporting-guideline and registration requirements, Lancet specialty house style, official-submission re-check, and desk-reject heuristics. Venue-fit aid only, not clinical advice. --- # The Lancet Psychiatry (the-lancet-psychiatry) ## Journal positioning The Lancet Psychiatry is a Lancet specialty journal for high-impact clinical and population research across psychiatry and mental health — mood, anxiety, psychotic, and neurodevelopmental disorders, substance use, child and adolescent and old-age psychiatry, and the mental-health consequences of physical illness and social adversity. It favors **practice- or policy-changing randomized trials, large cohorts, and population/epidemiological analyses with global reach and mental-health-systems relevance**, with a strong emphasis on rigorous design, patient-important outcomes, and attention to stigma, equity, and lived experience. Small single-site studies, mechanistic neuroscience without a clinical or population endpoint, and underpowered intervention pilots are a weak fit and belong in a specialist psychiatry or neuroscience venue. This skill is a **fit / venue-selection / re-framing** aid; it is not clinical or regulatory advice and does not replace the journal's current instructions for authors. Before submitting, re-check the live The Lancet Psychiatry author instructions. ## When to trigger - The author names The Lancet Psychiatry for a psychiatry or mental-health clinical/population study and wants a fit/framing check. - A trial or cohort must be re-framed around a globally relevant, practice- or policy-changing mental-health question. - The author is choosing between The Lancet Psychiatry, JAMA Psychiatry, and a specialist psychiatry journal. - The author needs the journal's reporting-guideline, registration, and desk-reject expectations for mental-health evidence. ## Scope & topic fit - Randomized trials of psychological, pharmacological, digital, and service-level interventions for mental disorders, with patient-important outcomes. - Large prospective cohorts and high-quality observational studies on mental-disorder incidence, course, prognosis, and outcomes at scale. - Population, epidemiological, and global-mental-health studies, including low- and middle-income settings and health-equity framing. - Mental-health-services, policy, and implementation research with system-level relevance. - Studies on the mental-health effects of physical illness, social adversity, and inequalities, and on stigma and lived experience, with rigorous methods. - Systematic reviews and meta-analyses resolving a focused, clinically or policy consequential mental-health question. ## Method & evidence bar - Trials must be adequately powered with prespecified, patient-important primary outcomes (validated symptom or functioning measures, remission, quality of life); outcome-measure choice and blinding feasibility must be justified. - The applicable reporting guideline and completed checklist are expected: CONSORT (incl. for non-pharmacological/psychological interventions) for trials, STROBE for observational studies, PRISMA for systematic reviews. - Trials require prospective registration; the registration number, protocol, and statistical-analysis plan are expected; patient and public involvement is valued. - Observational and epidemiological claims must address confounding, reverse causation, selection bias, and missing data; causal language must match the design. - Effect estimates need confidence intervals and clinically meaningful (not only statistically significant) thresholds; generalizability across settings and cultures should be argued. - Multi-site, international, and registry-scale evidence strengthens fit; underpowered single-site pilots rarely clear the bar. ## Structure & house style - Lancet specialty format with a structured summary and a Research in context / evidence-before-this-study panel; re-check current article types and limits on the live guide. - The introduction frames the global clinical or policy gap in mental health; the discussion states the practice or policy consequence and limitations plainly. - A CONSORT/STROBE/PRISMA flow diagram is expected where applicable; non-stigmatizing, person-first language and attention to lived experience are expected. - The role of the funding source statement and a data-sharing statement are expected; appendices carry protocol, full statistical methods, and additional analyses. ## Official-submission checklist - Before giving submission-ready advice, read `../../resources/source-basis.md` and `../../resources/official-source-map.md`; start from the ICMJE/EQUATOR and Lancet anchors, then cite the current The Lancet Psychiatry page you checked. - Search the live site for "The Lancet Psychiatry information for authors" and follow the current version. - Re-check article types, structured-summary and Research in context format, and word/reference/figure limits. - Confirm trial registration, the reporting checklist (CONSORT/STROBE/PRISMA), protocol/SAP, the role-of-funding-source statement, and data-sharing statement. - Re-check IRB/ethics and consent (including capacity and vulnerable-population safeguards), ICMJE authorship and conflict-of-interest disclosure, funding, and AI-use disclosure. - If the live official instructions conflict with this skill, the official instructions win. ## Pre-submission self-check - [ ] The study answers a globally relevant, practice- or policy-changing mental-health question. - [ ] The primary outcome is prespecified, validated, and patient-important; the study is adequately powered. - [ ] The correct reporting checklist (CONSORT/STROBE/PRISMA) is completed and attached. - [ ] Trials are prospectively registered with the number in the manuscript; protocol/SAP provided. - [ ] Confounding, reverse causation, and missing data are addressed; causal language matches the design. - [ ] Ethics/consent (capacity, vulnerable populations), ICMJE disclosures, role-of-funding-source, and a data-sharing statement are prepared. ## Common desk-reject triggers - Underpowered single-site pilots or feasibility studies presented as definitive. - Mechanistic neuroscience or neuroimaging with no clinical or population mental-health endpoint. - Non-validated or idiosyncratic outcome measures without justification or clinical anchoring. - Missing trial registration, protocol, or the required reporting checklist. - Observational analyses with unaddressed reverse causation or overstated causal claims. - Narrow or locally bounded scope without global or policy relevance; stigmatizing framing or language. ## Re-routing decision - JAMA Network family or US-centric clinical psychiatry framing → `jama-psychiatry`. - Population mental-health research without a clinical/service endpoint and with broad public-health framing → `the-lancet-public-health`. - Mental-health comorbidity of metabolic disease as the core contribution → `the-lancet-diabetes-and-endocrinology`. - Mechanistic psychiatric neuroscience → a specialist psychiatry or neuroscience journal. - Broad, practice-changing significance beyond psychiatry → general medicine (`jama` / NEJM / The Lancet in the natural-science bundle). ## Output format ```text [Fit] High / Medium / Low (one-line reason) [Target] The Lancet Psychiatry [Specialty tags] <2–3 closest psychiatry/mental-health topics> [Study design / reporting guideline] [Method/evidence] [Top risk] [Official items to re-check]
[Re-route suggestion] ```