07 Sep Educational Interventions May Head Off Anxiety Attacks
MedicalResearch.com Interview with:
Dr. Moreno-Peral
Dr. Patricia Moreno-Peral, PhD
Research Unit, Primary Care District of Málaga-Guadalhorce
Prevention and Health Promotion Research Network
Institute of Biomedical Research in Málaga Málaga, Spain
MedicalResearch.com: What is the background for this study?
Response: No systematic reviews or meta-analyses have been performed on the effectiveness of preventive psychological and/or educational interventions for anxiety in varied populations. Previously, other systematic reviews have been focused on prevention efficacy in specific interventions (e.g. cognitive behavior interventions) or age groups (e.g. adolescents).
MedicalResearch.com: What are the main findings?
Response: Psychological and/or educational preventive interventions for anxiety are effective and so the onset of Anxiety disorders can be avoided in varied population types. These results have a high external validity; since they were derived from 29 randomized clinical trials including 10 430 patients from 11 countries on 4 continents.
We can also say that taking into account the potential biases (quality of the studies, heterogeneity, publication biases, etc.) the degree of evidence of our study is reasonably good.
MedicalResearch.com: What should readers take away from your report?
Response: Readers should take away that anxiety can be avoid through psychological and/or educational interventions and that these preventive interventions for anxiety should be further developed and implemented. Citizens could ask health professionals to offer these types of interventions to prevent anxiety. Also national health systems, health companies, health managers and politicians should invest efforts to develop and implement these preventive programs in their respective fields of activity.
MedicalResearch.com: What recommendations do you have for future research as a result of this study?
Response: We need more studies that assess the cost-effectiveness and cost-utility of programs for the prevention of anxiety. Although we can say that psychological and educational interventions are effective in preventing anxiety, we still do not have answers about which interventions are most effective; new trials are therefore needed to compare the different interventions with each other. In addition, it would also be necessary to have more certainty about the longer term effectiveness, performing new controlled randomized trials with follow-up of two years or more.
MedicalResearch.com: Is there anything else you would like to add?
Response: lthough the effect is small, from the perspective of public health, small effects on prevention could have a high impact, thereby improving quality of life and reducing costs.
MedicalResearch.com: Thank you for your contribution to the MedicalResearch.com community.
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Last Updated on September 9, 2017 by Marie Benz MD FAAD