Abstract
BackgroundDespite progress in developing technologies for health promotion and disease treatment, mental disorders remain highly prevalent. In light of the associated personal and societal burden, primary prevention of new onset disorder can be seen as a primary challenge for health care systems and society. Internet- and mobile-based interventions (IMIs) are a promising approach to scale up preventive measures to a population level. The present protocol describes the rationale and design of a systematic review on the effectiveness of IMIs for the prevention of mental disorders.Methods/designA systematic literature search (MEDLINE, PsycINFO, CENTRAL) will be conducted. Keywords will target the topics “prevention”, “mental disorders”, and “Internet and mobile-based interventions”. Studies eligible for inclusion will be retrieved, and data will be extracted and evaluated (design, population, outcomes, sample size, duration of intervention and follow-up, drop-out rate) by two independent researchers. Quality of evidence will be assessed, and results will be synthesized qualitatively and pooled meta-analytically when outcome data are comparable in terms of endpoints, assessments, and target disorders.DiscussionPrevention of mental disorders is one of the major emerging global health challenges. This review and meta-analysis will contribute to our understanding of the potential role for IMIs to help address this challenge.Systematic review registrationPROSPERO CRD42015026781Electronic supplementary materialThe online version of this article (doi:10.1186/s13643-016-0209-5) contains supplementary material, which is available to authorized users.
Highlights
Despite progress in developing technologies for health promotion and disease treatment, mental disorders remain highly prevalent
This review and meta-analysis will contribute to our understanding of the potential role for Internet and mobile-based intervention (IMI) to help address this challenge
This systematic review and meta-analysis will add to the previous research by summarizing, synthesizing, and discussing the existing literature on Internet- and mobilebased prevention interventions for mental disorders
Summary
This systematic review and meta-analysis will add to the previous research by summarizing, synthesizing, and discussing the existing literature on Internet- and mobilebased prevention interventions for mental disorders. The proposed systematic review and meta-analysis will provide a valuable overview and synthesis of the entire field of Internet- and mobile-based mental disorder prevention interventions for clinical practitioners, researchers, and public health policy makers. In service of providing a broad review on the broad scope of mental disorders, this review will include trials that might differ substantially regarding their target population, methods, interventions, control groups, assessments, and outcomes While this will provide a comprehensive overview on the prevention of mental disorders by means of Internet- and mobile-based interventions, heterogeneity in clinical, methodological, and statistical approaches will necessarily limit the amount of quantitative pooling of studies. All authors had major contributions to the write-up and editing of the manuscript and read and approved the final manuscript
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