Interventions to promote mental health in nursing students: A systematic review and meta-analysis of randomized controlled trials.

AIMS: The aim of this study was to systematically examine the efficacy of interventions aimed at improving nursing students' mental health and to identify which form of interventions was effective.

BACKGROUND: Recent research has demonstrated mental disorders in common among nursing students and may lead to adverse consequences like low self-efficacy and poor academic performance.

DESIGN: According to the recommendations of the Cochrane Collaboration, a systematic review and meta-analysis was conducted.

DATA SOURCES: PubMed, EMBase, the Cochrane central register of randomized controlled trials, PsycINFO and Web of Science were used to identify potential studies (January 1990-April 2017).

REVIEW METHODS: A systematic review of the literature and meta-analysis of randomized controlled trials on the efficacy of interventions on reducing mental disorders in nursing students. Review Manager version 5.3 was used to obtain pooled results.

RESULTS: Twelve studies with a total sample size of 651 participants met the inclusion criteria. Interventions included psychotherapy, exercise, training programme and other forms of intervention. The results of subgroup analysis showed that depression benefit more from psychotherapy, anxiety benefit from psychotherapy and non-psychotherapy. Interventions were effective in managing stress and systolic blood pressure. Improvements on self-efficacy and diastolic blood pressure was not observed.

CONCLUSION: Psychotherapy should be chosen to reduce depression and anxiety of nursing students. There is a need for further studies should explore more potential value of psychotherapy on stress and biological change.