Meta-analysis of evaluation results of psychiatric-psychosomatic rehabilitation in Austria

Abstract

Since previous meta-analyses of psychiatric-psychosomatic rehabilitation only rarely included studies from Austrian rehabilitation clinics asystematic review with meta-analysis of previously available evaluation results from Austrian rehabilitation clinics should be conducted. Asystematic literature search in several data bases (Psyndex, PsycInfo, MEDLINE, Pubmed) and additional manual search was conducted. Evaluation results from the most commonly used assessment instruments (SCL-90/BSI, BDI, WHOQOL-BREF, GAF) were extracted from the studies included and subsequently ameta-analysis was calculated with the extracted data (pre-post comparison). 12publications with 9studies from 6different Austrian rehabilitation clinics could be included in the meta-analysis, with atotal of 9329 patients. Results show asignificant improvement from pre- to post assessment in the medium effect size range, with aHedges'g of 0.53 (95%-confidence interval [0.45;0.60]) for improvement in global symptom severity, aHedges'g of 0.59 (95%-confidence interval [0.54;0.63]) for improvement in subjective quality of life and aHedges'g of 1.00 (95%-confidence interval [0.83;1.18]) for improvement in global functioning. The effects are robust and there is no evidence for distortion or publication bias. On average medium effect sizes have been previously achieved with psychiatric-psychosomatic rehabilitation in Austrian rehabilitation clinics. This is comparable with the previous results of rehabilitation clinics in Germany. However, since only one controlled study is available thus far it can not be ruled out that the effects in comparison to no rehabilitation might turn out smaller. Thus, in the future increasingly controlled studies should be conducted and the quality of conducted studies should be improved.