Online psychosocial interventions for improving mental health in people during the COVID-19 pandemic: A systematic review and meta-analysis

BACKGROUND: During the COVID-19 pandemic, interventions for public mental health were mostly delivered through online modalities. Although many studies have explored the effectiveness of online psychosocial interventions through randomized controlled trials, there is a lack of quantitative synthesis of the effectiveness of online psychosocial interventions and an examination of their overall application. OBJECTIVE: To understand the commonly used psychosocial interventions during the COVID-19 pandemic and the effectiveness of the interventions. METHODS: Risk bias was assessed in the included studies according to the Cochrane Collaboration criteria, and data from post-test and follow-up were combined for standardized mean differences using Stata 16.0 software, and sources of heterogeneity were explored by subgroup analysis, and risk bias was assessed in the included studies using Review Manager 5.4 software. The study was written in strict accordance with PRISMA specifications, and registration was completed on the PROSPERO platform (CRD42022302917). RESULTS: The online psychosocial intervention had an ameliorating effect on anxiety (SMD = −0.78), depression (SMD = −0.80), and insomnia (SMD = −0.19) in the public during the COVID-19 pandemic, was ineffective for the intervention on stress, and the effectiveness of the intervention on depression continued at follow-up. Subgroup analyses showed that the type of intervention, intervention form, Duration of intervention, and setting of the control group influenced the trial results to some extent, with cognitive behavioral therapy being the most effective intervention for anxiety and depressive symptoms, self-help interventions being more effective than interventions with therapist interventions, and 1–4 week interventions being more effective than 5–8 week interventions. Due to the limited number of studies included in the analysis and variability in quality, more randomized controlled trials are needed to test the findings. CONCLUSION: Online psychosocial interventions can be effective in improving symptoms of anxiety, depression, stress, and insomnia in the public during the COVID-19 pandemic. However, additional randomized controlled trial studies are needed to determine which types of interventions are more appropriate for which populations and how they can be implemented to achieve better intervention outcomes.