Ashes to Ashes

As is evident from the title of this piece, and the editorial published in last month’s issue of Australian & New Zealand Journal of Psychiatry (ANZJP), ‘following on’ from having celebrated 50 years of the journal we intend to continue the fun and festivities into 2018 in the form of a contest between the two journals ANZJP and the British Journal of Psychiatry (BJPsych). To this end, I am grateful to my counterpart Professor Kamaldeep Bhui, Editor of the BJPsych, who is captaining the English team in the Psychiatry Ashes Test 2018. We will return to this titillating matter (see below), but as is customary for the first issue of the year, we turn first to general affairs and then briefly review some of the papers in this issue.

Half a century of ANZJP: a wonderful ‘knock’

The year 2017, which marked the 50th anniversary of the publication of ANZJP, was a tremendous success. I thank the many people who made this possible by submitting their work to the journal but especially those who provided support in the form of unique pieces such as the Retrospectives. These articles proved to be extremely popular and were exciting to read, as were the insights into the many interesting personalities that were featured in the Erudite Encounters series – each of whom added their own threads to the tapestry of academic psychiatry. The Journal’s gratitude also extends to the steadfast reviewers, authors, assessors and Editorial Board and team who make the ‘operation’ possible. Collectively, we have successfully managed to increase the profile of the Journal, reflected in part by a healthy increase in its impact factor (now 4.0 – its highest ever), and to enhance the appeal of ANZJP for cutting-edge science along with comprehensive reviews and opinion pieces. It has also been the home for College guidelines, which have been widely acclaimed, and are already having significant impact in teaching circles and in clinical practice.

It’s not all fun and games

As is now emblematic of ANZJP, this January edition of the Journal tackles complex issues such as mental health in the workplace (Petrie et al., this issue) and keeps alive the critical debate on the classification of eating disorders (Phillipou et al, this issue) – in particular their complex relationship to body image. This issue of the Journal also provides a very serious consideration of a much wider problem in medicine, but one that is having a profound impact on psychiatry research, namely, that of irreproducible data – in other words, why most of our findings fail to be corroborated in replication studies (Dean, this issue). Alongside these thought-provoking articles, the Journal continues to publish incisive comments from leading academics from across the world who together draw our attention to a number of critical issues – for example, mood stability and its regulation (Awad and Cipriani, this issue); the pressing need for prospective longitudinal research (Kessing, this issue); the necessity for specificity in our language (Gitlin, this issue); and the reduction of psychiatric beds in the public service (Allison et al., this issue; Campbell, this issue). This month’s issue of the Journal also publishes critical research on farm suicides in New Zealand (Beautrais, this issue), the attentional and social abilities of children with schizotypal and comorbid autism spectrum disorders (Abu-Akel et al., this issue) and explores the issues of whether common mental disorders can be predicted (Fernandez et al., this issue).

The detection, diagnosis and adequate treatment of mental disorders is the bread and butter of clinical practice, but every step is in want of improvement. Collectively, the papers in this month’s issue touch on each of these components and provide useful insights into where improvements need to be made. Another contemporary issue of particular relevance to readers of ANZJP is that of the health of doctors, and here again the Journal sheds light on this concern and features a paper that looks at the role of sleep in the well-being of medical students (Cvejic et al., this issue).

In sum, the ANZJP continues to provide a broad spectrum of opinions and a diverse array of research, much of which is at the frontiers of science. It is therefore apt that this month’s issue also includes a Movies in Mind review of 2001 A Space Odyssey (Hinton, this issue), and, while we can take heart from reports, which suggest that psychiatry is one of the professions least threatened by advances in artificial intelligence, machine learning and deep learning, it is important that we continue to foster a more granular and deep understanding of the brain and the mind that it supports, so that our knowledge of psychiatry does not seem artificial.

Let the games begin

At the time of writing, the first test in the Ashes Series is nearing conclusion and is likely to be resolved in Australia’s favour. Even so, the two teams are well matched and the Series promises to be exciting, both on and off the field. By the time you are reading this piece, The Psychiatry Ashes has also technically started, in that initial scores based on the papers selected by the two teams have been collated and agreed upon by both teams and the captains, and some of these papers may also have received citations in the month of January. Henceforth, however, the number of papers (2 per player and 22 papers in total for each team) will decrease by one, per team, per month. The papers that will effectively be ‘bowled out’ will be selected at random; however, over the course of the match, no player will be allowed to lose both of their papers so as to ensure that by the end of the year both teams still have 11 players with a paper each in play.

The purpose of the Psychiatry Ashes, how the concept was devised and by whom it is being overseen were the subject of editorials in both ANZJP and BJPsych in the December issues of both journals (Bhui and Malhi, 2017; Malhi and Bhui, 2017). In this issue, we briefly introduce the teams that have been carefully handpicked using complex algorithms and detailed insights, in other words, cunning and craft. The players of each team are listed in Figure 1 alongside an indication of their academic flair.

Figure 1.

The psychiatry ashes test batting order – Australia versus England.

Who’s in and who’s out?

Selection is always difficult and therefore, to assist with this, two Statistical Gurus furnished each Captain (the Editors of the respective journals) with mountains of data (magically accommodated on a single page). These statistics, pertaining to potential players, included, for example, h-indices, numbers of papers published in recent years, total citations to publications and highly cited papers, especially those in high impact factor journals. In addition, the Editors made a conscious effort to consider those who over the years have made significant contributions to academia and also meaningfully contributed to the journals, while also trying to achieve some balance as regards gender, experience and interest in the game of cricket.

The reactions of those invited to participate in the Inaugural Psychiatry Ashes have been varied and quite interesting. The overwhelming majority of those approached eagerly embraced the idea and regarded it, correctly, as harmless fun. They were delighted to be involved and appreciated both their personal recognition and the overarching aim of the exercise, namely, to foster interest in academic psychiatry. However, a few invitees simply didn’t get it, in some cases mistaking the invitation to mean selection for a real cricket match! Those that have accepted the call up are clearly fully committed, fully cognisant and eagerly looking forward to donning their figurative ‘whites’.