About the Journal

Field Editor-In-Chief: Pinhas N Dannon, Tel Aviv University, Israel
Abbreviation: Front. Psychiatry
NLM ID: Coming Soon
Indexed in: Google Scholar, PubMed and PsycInfo coming soon

Impulsivity is defined as a tendency to react to stimuli in a rapid, unplanned fashion without allowing time for complete processing of information. Impulsive behavior has been shown to be associated with decreased sensitivity to negative consequences of behavior and a lack of regard for long-term consequences.

Impulse control disorders are named as such due to their essential feature, which is the failure to resist an impulse, drive or temptation to perform a behavior. This behavior is experienced as anxiolitic, and even as pleasurable. Whether the diagnosis is that of pathological gambling, kleptomania, pyromania, tricotillomania, intermittent explosive disorder, binge eating or compulsive buying, the affected individual is unable to voluntarily control, decrease or stop the pathological behavior.

A broad spectrum of psychiatric disorders has the manifestations of fundamental personality trait such as impulsiveness and aggressive behavior. There has been much debate whether substance-related disorders and non-substance-related behaviors are best categorized as “addictions”, “compulsions” or “impulsive control disorders”. However, both DSM-IV-TR and the International Statistical Classification of Diseases and Related Health Problems 10th Revision (ICD-10) classify pathological gambling, kleptomania, pyromania, tricotillomania, intermittent explosive disorder, binge eating or compulsive buying as impulse control disorders.

Although research shows that impulse control disorders comprise up to 10% of psychiatric diagnoses, they remain underdiagnosed or undertreated by clinicians, patients’ families and patients themselves. Even now, the patient-family-therapist triangle sees these disorders as personal behavioral problems which could be solved by behavioral modifications without medical help.

Frontiers in Impulsivity, Compulsivity and Behavioral Dyscontrol is a specialty section of Frontiers in Psychiatry with the following aims:

- To explore impulsive behaviors and their relationship with different psychiatric diagnoses
- To explain the biopsychosocial connection of the impulsive behavior
- To explore the relationship between impulsive behavior and aggression
- To explain the importance of impulse control disorders as a unique group of diagnoses    in clinical practice
- To demonstrate the neurocognitive, neurofunctional and neurophysiological changes in    impulsivity-aggression-behavioral dyscontrol triangle
- To explore the genetic and environmental factors in these disorders
- To explore different treatment possibilities in these disorders
- To remember our role as therapists and researchers in the legal and ethical issues
- To remind ourselves of our mission as therapists and our behavior in relation to this    specific type of patient.

Frontiers in Impulsivity, Compulsivity and Behavioral Dyscontrol welcomes the following tier 1 article types: original research articles, clinical case studies, review articles, hypothesis and theory articles, methods articles, commentaries, perspective articles, opinion articles, book reviews and conference proceedings.

All articles must be submitted directly to Frontiers in Impulsivity, Compulsivity and Behavioral Dyscontrol where they are processed by the associate and review editors of the specialty section.

All articles published in Frontiers in Impulsivity, Compulsivity and Behavioral Dyscontrol will be subjected to the Frontiers evaluation system after online publication. Authors of the original research articles with the highest impact, as judged by many expert readers, will be invited by the editor-in-chief of Frontiers in Psychiatry to write a prestigious Frontiers focused review – a tier 2 article. This is referred to as "democratic tiering". The selection is based on the reader impact over a 3-month period from the date of publication. The selected high impact articles are re-written in a review style centered on the original discovery and aim to address the wider audience across all of psychiatry.

Frontiers’ philosophy is that all research is for the benefit of mankind. It is enabled by society and should be returned to all people without borders or discrimination. That is why Frontiers provides open and free access to all of its publications. For more information on the open access movement click here.

Under the Frontiers terms and conditions you retain the copyright of your work. This means that you may reproduce copies of your articles in any way you choose and freely disseminate these as reprints, as long as the original publication is fully cited. For instance, your published article can be posted on your personal or institutional homepage, e-mailed to friends and colleagues, printed, archived in a collection, distributed on CD-ROM, quoted in the press, translated and furthermore sent to as many people and as often as you wish.

Each Frontiers article is a landmark of the highest quality, due to true collaborative interactions between authors and the highest quality reviewers. Frontiers recognizes the immense importance of the potential impact of published research on future research and society and, hence, does not support superficial review, light review or no review publishing models. Research knowledge must be validated by peers before entering the stream of knowledge that will eventually reach the public and shape society. Therefore, Frontiers supports the highest quality reviews and operates according to the novel Frontiers academic model that applies a rigorous but unbiased Frontiers review system, a separated, online, automated and global Frontiers evaluation system and Frontiers distillation system, as well as the Frontiers recognition system to reward the most outstanding research selected by the entire community.