A Note of Gratitude to C. Alan Anderson, M.D., Deputy Editor, Journal of Neuropsychiatry and Clinical Neurosciences

It is my privilege and honor to recognize and thank C. Alan Anderson, M.D., F.A.N.P.A., for 10 years of outstanding service as deputy editor of the Journal of Neuropsychiatry and Clinical Neurosciences (JNCN), from which he retired on December 31, 2024. After a decade of practice in emergency medicine, two additional decades of broad-ranging scholarship in and service to our field as a subspecialist in behavioral neurology & neuropsychiatry (BNNP), and clinical training and academic appointments in neurology, emergency medicine, and psychiatry, Dr. Anderson began his tenure as deputy editor for the journal in the spring of 2015.

Across the 10 volumes of JNCN that Dr. Anderson helped shepherd to publication in this role, he editorially managed hundreds of manuscript submissions. These works collectively encompassed the full spectrum of cognitive, emotional, behavioral, and elementary neurological features of brain disorders, including their evaluation and their treatments. His exceptional ability to evaluate the quality of submitted works was informed by his encyclopedic knowledge of neurology, psychiatry, emergency medicine, and general medicine. His four decades of clinical experience, teaching, and research in university-based, veteran health care, public psychiatry, and private practice settings (both inpatient and outpatient) enabled him to bring to his work with JNCN a world-class acumen as a master clinician-educator in BNNP that fundamentally informed the evolution and reshaping of JNCN in which we engaged during his tenure. His ability to recognize submissions that described truly novel aspects of neuropsychiatric disorders and innovative approaches to their clinical assessment and management strengthened the Clinical and Research Report and Case Report sections of JNCN and the relevance of those reports to the everyday practice of brain medicine. His equally remarkable and deep understanding of the needs of learners, practitioners, educators, and scholars in BNNP and the clinical neurosciences contributed immensely to editorial direction setting for JNCN. In particular, his perspective facilitated expansion of JNCN’s complement of article types and contributed to the thoughtful consideration and resolution of complex clinical, scientific, ethical, and administrative issues raised during editorial and peer review of submissions to the journal. As editors, contributors, and readers, we all owe Dr. Anderson a deep debt of gratitude for his stewardship of and stalwart service to JNCN and the American Neuropsychiatric Association, for which JNCN remains the official journal.

On a personal note, it is a bittersweet experience for me to offer this note of gratitude and appreciation. For more than three decades, beginning with our residency training at the University of Colorado School of Medicine, Dr. Anderson has been among my most valued academic collaborators, an enduring colleague and trusted adviser, and a close and deeply cherished friend. He is a role model for grace and aplomb in the transition from academia and clinical medicine to retirement, which he extended for an additional 2 years to continue our work together on JNCN—for the mutual joy, intellectual stimulation, and regular convening that our collaboration afforded after his retirement elsewhere. As he passes the baton of Deputy Editor to his successor (a transition noted on the journal’s website, the JNCN masthead, and the next JNCN issue), it is with a combination of admiration, gratitude, and poignancy that I bid him adieu in this context and offer the deepest and most heartfelt thanks on behalf of JNCN and its editorial board, editorial team, publisher, authors, and readers.