Non-pharmacological interventions in psychiatric care – a systematic reference list
Mapping review
|Updated
The purpose was to find research on the effectiveness of non-pharmacological interventions for people with severe mental disorders seeking a non-pharmacological treatment option.
Key message
The Knowledge Centre for the Health Services in the Norwegian Institute of Public Health conducted a systematic literature search with subsequent sorting of possible relevant publications. The purpose was to find research on the effectiveness of non-pharmacological interventions for people with severe mental disorders seeking a non-pharmacological treatment option.
Method
We designed a search strategy for a systematic literature search to find research on the effectiveness of non-pharmacological interventions. We searched several research databases to identify systematic reviews. We performed the search on December 7th 2015. First, one researcher screened all titles and abstracts to eliminate references that obviously were not about mental health or non-pharmacological interventions. Thereafter, two researchers independently screened the titles and abstracts according to the inclusion criteria. From the abstract of each review, we obtained information about the population, intervention, outcomes, and the review authors’ conclusions. We did not obtain the reviews in full-text.
Results
The reviews focus on people with a variety of severe mental disorders and symptoms. The most common disorders are:
• schizophrenia eller schizoaffective disorder (41 reviews)
• depression (32 reviews)
• bipolar disease (14 reviews)
A range of different non-pharmacological interventions exists. The most common interventions in the reviews are:
• different psychological interventions (59 reviews)
• exercise or diet interventions (22 reviews)
• food supplements or herbal medicine (9 reviews)
