The effectiveness of problem-solving therapy for primary care patients' depressive and/or anxiety disorders: A systematic review and meta-Analysis

Abstract

Background: There is increasing demand for managing depressive and/or anxiety disorders among primary care patients. Problem-solving therapy (PST) is a brief evidence-And strength-based psychotherapy that has received increasing support for its effectiveness in managing depression and anxiety among primary care patients. Methods: We conducted a systematic review and meta-Analysis of clinical trials examining PST for patients with depression and/or anxiety in primary care as identified by searches for published literature across 6 databases and manual searching. A weighted average of treatment effect size estimates per study was used for meta-Analysis and moderator analysis. Results: From an initial pool of 153 primary studies, 11 studies (with 2072 participants) met inclusion criteria for synthesis. PST reported an overall significant treatment effect for primary care depression and/or anxiety (d = 0.673; P