Interventions for common mental health problems among university and college students: A systematic review and meta-analysis of randomized controlled trials.
Author: Huang J1, Nigatu YT2, Smail-Crevier R2, Zhang X1, Wang J3
Affiliation:
1Department of Child and Adolescent Health, School of Public Health, Tianjin Medical University, China.
2Work & Mental Health Research Unit, The Royal's Institute of Mental Health Research, Canada.
3Work & Mental Health Research Unit, The Royal's Institute of Mental Health Research, Canada; School of Epidemiology and Public Health, Faculty of Medicine, University of Ottawa, Canada; School of Psychology, Faculty of Social Sciences, University of Ottawa, Canada; Department of Psychiatry, Faculty of Medicine, University of Ottawa, Canada. Electronic address: Jianli.Wang@theroyal.ca.
Conference/Journal: J Psychiatr Res.
Date published: 2018 Sep 29
Other:
Volume ID: 107 , Pages: 1-10 , Special Notes: doi: 10.1016/j.jpsychires.2018.09.018. [Epub ahead of print] , Word Count: 268
Common mental health problems (CMHPs), such as depression, anxiety disorder, obsessive-compulsive disorder (OCD), and post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) are internalizing disorders with high comorbidity. University and college students are under many stressors and transitional events, and students fall within the age range when CMHPs are at their developmental peak. Compared to the expanded effort to explore and treat CMHPs, there has been no a meta-analysis that comprehensively reviewed the interventions for CMHPs and examined the effects of interventions for CMHPs in college students. The objective of this review is to conduct a systematic review and meta-analysis of randomized controlled trials (RCTs) examining interventions for CMHPs among university and college students and to estimate their post-intervention effect size (ES), as well as follow-up ES, for depression, anxiety disorder, OCD and PTSD separately. Meta-analytic procedures were conducted in accordance with PRISMA guidelines. We reviewed 7768 abstracts from which 331 full-text articles were reviewed and 51 RCTs were included in the analysis. We found moderate effect sizes for both depression (Hedges' g = -0.60) and anxiety disorder (Hedges' g = -0.48). There was no evidence that existing interventions for OCD or PTSD were effective in this population. For interventions with high number of papers, we performed subgroup analysis and found that cognitive behavioral therapy (CBT) and mindfulness-based interventions were effective for both depression and generalized anxiety disorder (GAD), and attention/perception modification was effective for GAD; other interventions (i.e. art, exercise and peer support) had the highest ES for both depression and GAD among university and college students.
KEYWORDS: Anxiety disorder; Depression; Intervention; Meta-analysis; OCD; Obsessive-compulsive disorder; PTSD; Post-traumatic stress disorder
PMID: 30300732 DOI: 10.1016/j.jpsychires.2018.09.018
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