---
title: "Mental health research: papers, trends and top journals"
description: "From 2017 to 2026 (so far), the keyword “mental health” appeared in 1,749 papers in the tracked journals, most of them in health economics and policy (1,048), economics (323) and information systems (100)."
url: https://scholar4ai.com/keywords/mental-health
markdown_url: https://scholar4ai.com/keywords/mental-health.md
license: CC BY-NC 4.0 (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/)
share_text: "From 2017 to 2026 (so far), the keyword “mental health” appeared in 1,749 papers in the tracked journals, most of them in health economics and policy (1,048), economics (323) and information systems (100). (as of 2026-11-05)"
data_url: https://scholar4ai.com/data/rankings.json
updated: 2026-11-05T06:02:37+09:00
window: 2026-10-07 to 2026-11-05
source: OpenAlex (CC0)
---

# Papers on “mental health”

[Browse research topics](https://scholar4ai.com/keywords/directory/page/4.md)

Research on “mental health” in the 480 tracked journals: papers per year and category, the journals, institutions and countries publishing it, the keywords studied with it and its most-cited papers. It is not among the most frequent keywords of the last 30 days, so this page has no list of its latest papers.

Back to the ranking: https://scholar4ai.com/rankings/keywords.md

## Key findings

- From 2017 to 2026 (so far), the keyword “mental health” appeared in 1,749 papers in the tracked journals, most of them in health economics and policy (1,048), economics (323) and information systems (100).
- 275 of them were published in 2025, against 82 in 2017.
- Since 2023, the institutions with the most of these papers were IZA - Institute of Labor Economics (26), The University of Melbourne (19) and Peking University (18).
- The journals publishing most of them were Social Science & Medicine (209), SSM - Population Health (59) and International Journal for Equity in Health (48).
- The most-cited of them is “Work organization and mental health problems in PhD students” (Research Policy, 2017), with 1,179 citations.

## Papers per year

*Papers per publication year and category*

| Category | 2017 | 2018 | 2019 | 2020 | 2021 | 2022 | 2023 | 2024 | 2025 | 2026 (so far) |
|---|---:|---:|---:|---:|---:|---:|---:|---:|---:|---:|
| [Health Economics and Policy](https://scholar4ai.com/categories/health-economics-and-policy.md) | 57 | 61 | 83 | 117 | 130 | 122 | 126 | 109 | 145 | 98 |
| [Economics](https://scholar4ai.com/categories/economics.md) | 14 | 15 | 24 | 23 | 35 | 35 | 46 | 41 | 58 | 32 |
| [Information Systems](https://scholar4ai.com/categories/information-systems.md) | 6 | 4 | 7 | 10 | 6 | 10 | 18 | 15 | 14 | 10 |
| [Management](https://scholar4ai.com/categories/management.md) | 3 | 6 | 2 | 4 | 8 | 6 | 5 | 13 | 13 | 2 |
| [AI](https://scholar4ai.com/categories/ai.md) | 1 | 1 | 1 | 2 | 8 | 10 | 12 | 7 | 14 | 6 |
| [Tourism and Hospitality](https://scholar4ai.com/categories/tourism-and-hospitality.md) | 0 | 1 | 2 | 6 | 7 | 7 | 4 | 6 | 6 | 3 |
| [Higher Education and Research](https://scholar4ai.com/categories/higher-education-and-research.md) | 0 | 0 | 2 | 3 | 5 | 4 | 5 | 6 | 8 | 1 |
| [Statistics](https://scholar4ai.com/categories/statistics.md) | 1 | 3 | 1 | 4 | 2 | 6 | 3 | 2 | 6 | 5 |
| [Operations Research](https://scholar4ai.com/categories/operations-research.md) | 0 | 0 | 2 | 0 | 4 | 1 | 3 | 4 | 4 | 2 |
| [Finance](https://scholar4ai.com/categories/finance.md) | 0 | 0 | 2 | 2 | 2 | 1 | 1 | 4 | 5 | 2 |
| [Marketing](https://scholar4ai.com/categories/marketing.md) | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 1 | 1 | 2 | 2 |
| All categories | 82 | 91 | 126 | 171 | 207 | 202 | 224 | 208 | 275 | 163 |

## Where the papers come from

*Journals with the most papers, since 2023*

| # | Journal | Papers |
|---:|---|---:|
| 1 | [Social Science & Medicine](https://scholar4ai.com/journals/social-science-medicine.md) | 209 |
| 2 | [SSM - Population Health](https://scholar4ai.com/journals/ssm-population-health.md) | 59 |
| 3 | [International Journal for Equity in Health](https://scholar4ai.com/journals/international-journal-for-equity-in-health.md) | 48 |
| 4 | [Computers in Human Behavior](https://scholar4ai.com/journals/computers-in-human-behavior.md) | 37 |
| 5 | [Health and Quality of Life Outcomes](https://scholar4ai.com/journals/health-and-quality-of-life-outcomes.md) | 31 |
| 6 | [Economics & Human Biology](https://scholar4ai.com/journals/economics-human-biology.md) | 31 |
| 7 | [Journal of Happiness Studies](https://scholar4ai.com/journals/journal-of-happiness-studies.md) | 22 |
| 8 | [Journal of Health Economics](https://scholar4ai.com/journals/journal-of-health-economics.md) | 14 |
| 9 | [Journal of Development Economics](https://scholar4ai.com/journals/journal-of-development-economics.md) | 13 |
| 10 | [Labour Economics](https://scholar4ai.com/journals/labour-economics.md) | 11 |

*Institutions with the most papers, since 2023*

| # | Institution | Papers |
|---:|---|---:|
| 1 | [IZA - Institute of Labor Economics](https://scholar4ai.com/institutions/iza-institute-of-labor-economics.md) | 26 |
| 2 | [The University of Melbourne](https://scholar4ai.com/institutions/the-university-of-melbourne.md) | 19 |
| 3 | [Peking University](https://scholar4ai.com/institutions/peking-university.md) | 18 |
| 4 | [University of Toronto](https://scholar4ai.com/institutions/university-of-toronto.md) | 17 |
| 5 | [Harvard University](https://scholar4ai.com/institutions/harvard-university.md) | 16 |
| 6 | [Chinese University of Hong Kong](https://scholar4ai.com/institutions/chinese-university-of-hong-kong.md) | 15 |
| 7 | [University College London](https://scholar4ai.com/institutions/university-college-london.md) | 14 |
| 8 | [University of Oxford](https://scholar4ai.com/institutions/university-of-oxford.md) | 14 |
| 9 | [University of York](https://scholar4ai.com/institutions/university-of-york.md) | 14 |
| 10 | [Columbia University](https://scholar4ai.com/institutions/columbia-university.md) | 12 |

*Countries with the most papers, since 2023*

| # | Country | Papers |
|---:|---|---:|
| 1 | United States | 256 |
| 2 | China | 146 |
| 3 | United Kingdom | 129 |
| 4 | Germany | 78 |
| 5 | Australia | 74 |
| 6 | Canada | 60 |
| 7 | Netherlands | 45 |
| 8 | Spain | 43 |
| 9 | Italy | 41 |
| 10 | France | 30 |

*Keywords with the most papers, since 2023*

| # | Keyword | Papers |
|---:|---|---:|
| 1 | [COVID-19 pandemic](https://scholar4ai.com/keywords/covid-19-pandemic.md) | 140 |
| 2 | [depression](https://scholar4ai.com/keywords/depression.md) | 138 |
| 3 | physical health | 105 |
| 4 | [gender differences](https://scholar4ai.com/keywords/gender-differences.md) | 95 |
| 5 | anxiety | 86 |
| 6 | [older adults](https://scholar4ai.com/keywords/older-adults.md) | 55 |
| 7 | [well-being](https://scholar4ai.com/keywords/well-being.md) | 51 |
| 8 | [China](https://scholar4ai.com/keywords/china.md) | 47 |
| 9 | depressive symptoms | 46 |

## Most-cited papers

*Most-cited papers since 2017*

| # | Citations | Per month | Title | Journal | Published | Authors |
|---:|---:|---:|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | 1,179 | 10.2 | [Work organization and mental health problems in PhD students](https://doi.org/10.1016/j.respol.2017.02.008) | [Research Policy](https://scholar4ai.com/journals/research-policy.md) | 2017-03-13 | Katia Levecque, Frederik Anseel, Alain De Beuckelaer et al. |
| 2 | 659 | 5.7 | [Happiness in the air: How does a dirty sky affect mental health and subjective well-being?](https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jeem.2017.04.001) | [Journal of Environmental Economics and Management](https://scholar4ai.com/journals/journal-of-environmental-economics-and-management.md) | 2017-04-05 | Xin Zhang, Xiaobo Zhang, Xi Chen |
| 3 | 637 | 9.0 | [COVID-19, lockdowns and well-being: Evidence from Google Trends](https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jpubeco.2020.104346) | [Journal of Public Economics](https://scholar4ai.com/journals/journal-of-public-economics.md) | 2020-11-30 | Abel Brodeur, Andrew Eric Clark, Sarah Flèche et al. |
| 4 | 382 | 4.5 | [Temperature and mental health: Evidence from the spectrum of mental health outcomes](https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jhealeco.2019.102240) | [Journal of Health Economics](https://scholar4ai.com/journals/journal-of-health-economics.md) | 2019-10-04 | Jamie T. Mullins, Corey White |
| 5 | 337 | 3.7 | [How commuting affects subjective wellbeing](https://doi.org/10.1007/s11116-019-09983-9) | [Transportation](https://scholar4ai.com/journals/transportation.md) | 2019-03-11 | Ben Clark, Kiron Chatterjee, Adam Martin et al. |

## Research ideas that follow this keyword

- [Mental health and the labour market](https://scholar4ai.com/ideas/mental-health-and-the-labour-market.md)

## Cite this page

Scholar4AI. (2026). Papers on “mental health”. Journal and Conference Research Rankings. Retrieved November 5, 2026, from https://scholar4ai.com/keywords/mental-health

```bibtex
@misc{scholar4ai-keywords-mental-health,
  author = {{Scholar4AI}},
  title = {Papers on “mental health”},
  year = {2026},
  howpublished = {\url{https://scholar4ai.com/keywords/mental-health}},
  urldate = {2026-11-05},
  note = {Journal and Conference Research Rankings; data from OpenAlex (CC0); licensed CC BY-NC 4.0}
}
```

License: CC BY-NC 4.0 (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/).