Interventions on medical students’ psychological health: A meta-analysis

AbstractIntroductionThree systemic reviews reported that, although many studies echoed the importance of stress management programs in medical curricula, yet very few high quality studies provided convincing evidence of their effectiveness. So far, none of meta-analysis study was done to appraise their effectiveness on medical students’ psychological health.ObjectiveThe author conducted a meta-analysis to quantitatively appraise and summarize all studies of stress management interventions on medical students’ psychological health that include general psychological distress, stress, anxiety and depression symptoms.MethodThe author planned, conducted and reported this study according to the PRISMA standard of quality for reporting meta-analyses.ResultThe author yielded 23,921 relevant articles based on search terms and eventually, after critical appraisal, only 13 articles were included in the meta-analysis. Stress management interventions were associated with moderate, statistically significant improvement of medical students’ psychological health [−0.335 (95% CI, −0.423, −0.246), P