Bibliometric and visual analysis of the global treatment of affective disorders in the 21st Century: Developments, hotspots, and trends

Abstract

The treatment of affective disorders is becoming the mainstream of research, and its study has attracted extensive attention from scholars all over the world. However, there is no comprehensive review of this research. From the perspective of bibliometrics, based on 2692 articles in the Web of Science Core Collection (WOSCC) database, this paper systematically and comprehensively describes the progress and hot spots in the treatment of affective disorders. Since the 21st century, research on treating affective disorders has shown a growing trend. The results show that from 2000 to 2021, the United States was the most active country in publishing relevant articles, Harvard University was the most productive institution, and Ketter T was the most representative author in this field. However, there was little cooperation between different countries/institutions. The research in the field of affective disorder treatment can be summarized into three main research areas: the leading causes of affective disorder, the harm of affective disorder, and the treatment methods. Finally, this paper proposes some challenges and prospects for the rapid and balanced development of the field of affective disorder therapy. As far as we know, this study is the first one specialized in visualizing the treatment of affective disorders, which is conducive to identifying current research hotspots and predicting potential future research directions.