Traumatic physical injury such as that resulting from road traffic accidents, falls and fires can cause high levels of subsequent disability in the person affected. This may include physical disability as a result of the initial injury and subsequent complications, mental health problems such as depression, anxiety and post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) as a result of the trauma of the event which caused the injury and the resulting physical and social problems, and social problems such as loss of social life and unemployment. It is therefore important to evaluate interventions which seek to prevent these adverse secondary outcomes. Psychosocial interventions, which include psychological therapies such as interpersonal counselling and cognitive behavioural therapy (CBT), and social interventions such as befriending, social support and self-help advice, delivered soon after the injury, may help to prevent these problems.
This review identified five randomised controlled trials, involving 756 participants, which evaluated psychosocial interventions for the prevention of disability following traumatic injury. No convincing evidence was found supporting the efficacy of these interventions. In particular, self-help booklets and interpersonal therapies had no effect on preventing disability. There was some evidence that a more complex intervention involving collaborative care reduced symptoms of depression and PTSD in the short but not the medium term. There was evidence from three trials that psychosocial interventions had a detrimental effect on mental health. Taken together, our findings cannot be taken as supporting the provision of psychosocial interventions to prevent aspects of disability arising from physical injury. These results suggest that future interventions should focus on screening patients at risk of poor outcomes and only treating those who develop subsequent problems. However, the strength of these conclusions is limited by the small size and varied nature of many of the trials, which means that their results cannot be pooled.
阅读完整摘要
Traumatic physical injury can result in many disabling sequelae including physical and mental health problems and impaired social functioning.
研究目的
To assess the effectiveness of psychosocial interventions in the prevention of physical, mental and social disability following traumatic physical injury.
检索策略
The search was not restricted by date, language or publication status. We searched the following electronic databases; Cochrane Injuries Group Specialised Register, CENTRAL (The Cochrane Library 2009, Issue 1), MEDLINE (Ovid SP), EMBASE (Ovid SP), PsycINFO (Ovid SP), Controlled Trials metaRegister (www.controlled-trials.com), AMED (Allied & Complementary Medicine), ISI Web of Science: Social Sciences Citation Index (SSCI), PubMed. We also screened the reference lists of all selected papers and contacted authors of relevant studies. The latest search for trials was in February 2008.
纳入排除标准
Randomised controlled trials that consider one or more defined psychosocial interventions for the prevention of physical disability, mental health problems or reduced social functioning as a result of traumatic physical injury. We excluded studies that included patients with traumatic brain injury (TBI).
资料收集与分析
Two authors independently screened the titles and abstracts of search results, reviewed the full text of potentially relevant studies, independently assessed the risk of bias and extracted data.
主要结果
We included five studies, involving 756 participants. Three studies assessed the effect of brief psychological therapies, one assessed the impact of a self-help booklet, and one the effect of collaborative care. The disparate nature of the trials covering different patient populations, interventions and outcomes meant that it was not possible to pool data meaningfully across studies. There was no evidence of a protective effect of brief psychological therapy or educational booklets on preventing disability. There was evidence from one trial of a reduction in both post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) and depressive symptoms one month after injury in those who received a collaborative care intervention combined with a brief psycho-educational intervention, however this was not retained at follow up. Overall mental health status was the only disability outcome affected by any intervention. In three trials the psychosocial intervention had a detrimental effect on the mental health status of patients.
作者结论
This review provides no convincing evidence of the effectiveness of psychosocial interventions for the prevention of disability following traumatic physical injury. Taken together, our findings cannot be considered as supporting the provision of psychosocial interventions to prevent aspects of disability arising from physical injury. However, these conclusions are based on a small number of disparate trials with small to moderate sample sizes and are therefore necessarily cautious. More research, using larger sample sizes, and similar interventions and patient populations to enable pooling of results, is needed before these findings can be confirmed.
