Evaluating the effectiveness of psychosocial interventions for individuals with visible differences: A systematic review of the empirical literature

The objective of this review was to systematically identify and evaluate all known studies testing empirically the efficacy of psychosocial intervention programmes for adults with visible differences. Twelve papers met the inclusion criteria. None of the papers demonstrated adequately the clinical effectiveness of the interventions. The review concluded that further research was needed to demonstrate adequately the effectiveness of existing interventions, and a greater number of Randomised Controlled Trials and experimental studies were required to increase the methodological validity of intervention studies. © 2007 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved