EDITORIAL

The way towards excellence

Margarita Antonia Villar Luis

Editor of SMAD, Electronical Journal Mental Health and Drugs and Full Profesor of the Escola de Enfermagem de Ribeirão Preto, Universidade de São Paulo, WHO Collaborating Centre for Nursing Research Development, Brazil, e-mail: margarit@eerp.usp.br

The current issue starts a new cycle of SMAD, as the Journal has acquired enough “maturity” by now to launch three annual issues. This initiative is a victory of all researchers in mental health, alcohol and drugs, who have believed in the potential of the journal since its beginning, honoring it with the submission of their academic-scientific experiences. It is expected that they persist in this belief and maintain their enthusiasm related to SMAD.

With the support of the Brazilian Secretariat on Drug Policy (SENAD), there will be resources to implement innovations needed to update and have the journal reach higher levels of classification. Investments will be made in the submission system, webpage and internationalization.

Thus, a promising future is outlined for SMAD. Certainly, what was positive will be kept, such as the diversity in publications, a fact evidenced in its collection (which from now on can also be accessed at BEDEnf), showing that the journal had no endogeneity problems, one of the criteria the instances use to evaluate scientific journals.

In this issue, researchers from other regions of Brazil and cities in the state of Sao Paulo invite you to read and encourage reflection on different knowledge areas, applicable to both care and prevention of health problems; focus on comorbidities; specific and risk groups. It is also addressed the occurrence of alcohol use, religiosity as a protective factor against the use of psychoactive substances, meanings of aversive images regarding cigarette packets and, finally, a review article that presents a retrospective image of health professionals’ knowledge and attitudes towards alcohol, alcoholism and the alcoholic. Undoubtedly, researches reported in this issue are quite instigating.

Good reading!