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Review
. 2022 Jun 4;11(11):3209.
doi: 10.3390/jcm11113209.

Psychological Interventions in a Pandemic Emergency: A Systematic Review and Meta-Analysis of SARS-CoV-2 Studies

Grazia D'Onofrio  1 , Nicoletta Trotta  2 , Melania Severo  2 , Salvatore Iuso  2 , Filomena Ciccone  1 , Anna Maria Prencipe  1 , Seyed Mohammad Nabavi  3 , Gabriella De Vincentis  4 , Annamaria Petito  2
Affiliations
Review

Psychological Interventions in a Pandemic Emergency: A Systematic Review and Meta-Analysis of SARS-CoV-2 Studies

Grazia D'Onofrio et al. J Clin Med. .

Abstract

Background: The study aim was to review the evidence and effectiveness of psychological interventions applied during Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome Coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2) pandemic. Methods: A literature search was run from April 2020 to April 2021. The inclusion criteria were: (1) RCTs or observational studies; (2) professional health carers and patients who had contracted coronavirus during the pandemic; (3) adults and elderly people with a viral infection diagnosis; (4) suitable measures to assess intervention effectiveness on clinical status and psychological and behavioral aspects. An internal validity assessment was planned using robvis. Data were synthesized according to PICO criteria. Results: A total of 12 studies were selected. Studies measuring mental health outcomes demonstrated the greatest reduction in symptoms, with eight out of the twelve studies demonstrating a reduction in symptoms that reached statistical significance (p < 0.05) and four of the studies reaching a higher significance level of p < 0.01. The type of psychological intervention was predominantly cognitive behavioral therapy (CBT). All studies except one was run online. Conclusion: Psychological interventions have a benefit on mental health outcomes, even if performed online. In particular, CBT seems to be the psychological intervention that is used more and also seems to have a larger effect size on the mitigation of mental health symptoms and increasing resilience.

Keywords: anxiety; depression; psychological treatment; resilience; viral infection.

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Conflict of interest statement

The authors declare no conflict of interest.

Figures

Figure 1
Figure 1
Flow diagram outlining the selection procedure to identify articles which were included in the analysis of psychological interventions in SARS-CoV-2 pandemic emergency.
Figure 2
Figure 2
Risk of bias in included studies.
Figure 3
Figure 3
Forest plot of the psychological intervention effect during the SARS-CoV-2 pandemic Using Random Effects Model [20,21,22,23,24,25,26,27,28]. Squares indicate the OR of individual studies, and the extended lines denote 95% confidence intervals (CI). The diamond data indicates pooled prevalence. Test of heterogeneity: I2 = 99.99%, p = 0.00.
See this image and copyright information in PMC

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