PT  - JOURNAL ARTICLE
AU  - Anao Zhang
AU  - Sunyoung Park
AU  - John E. Sullivan
AU  - Shijie Jing
TI  - The Effectiveness of Problem-Solving Therapy for Primary Care Patients' Depressive and/or Anxiety Disorders: A Systematic Review and Meta-Analysis
AID  - 10.3122/jabfm.2018.01.170270
DP  - 2018 Jan 01
TA  - The Journal of the American Board of Family
                Medicine
PG  - 139--150
VI  - 31
IP  - 1
4099  - http://www.jabfm.org/content/31/1/139.short
4100  - http://www.jabfm.org/content/31/1/139.full
SO  - J Am Board Fam Med2018 Jan 01; 31
AB  - 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 < .001). Participants' age and sex moderated treatment effects. Physician-involved PST in primary care, despite a significantly smaller treatment effect size than mental health provider only PST, reported an overall statistically significant effect (d = 0.35; P = .029).Conclusions: Results from the study supported PST's effectiveness for primary care depression and/or anxiety. Our preliminary results also indicated that physician-involved PST offers meaningful improvements for primary care patients' depression and/or anxiety.