Are brief psychological therapies effective for adults experiencing common mental health difficulties in primary care?

Comments on an article Brief psychological therapies for emotional disorders in primary care: a systematic review and meta-analysis by J. Corpas et al. (2021). Corpas and colleagues provide a comprehensive meta-analysis on the clinical effectiveness of brief psychological therapies for adults experiencing common mental health difficulties in primary care. The review focused on the relative effectiveness of psychological therapies in comparison to pharmacological interventions that tend to be usual care in this setting. Brief psychological therapies averaged six but ranged from two to 10 sessions delivered by specialist mental health professionals as opposed to practitioners providing routine healthcare. There were six different types of therapy identified: problem-solving, cognitive behavioral, counseling, mindfulness-based cognitive, interpersonal, and psychodynamic. Common mental health difficulties included anxiety, depression, and emotional disorders/mixed diagnoses. Thirty-four discrete studies from 33 randomized control trials met this inclusion criteria. As is usual in reviews, there was variability in studies contributing to the meta-analysis with samples ranging from 20 to 361 participants, with associated variations in methodological quality and whether all trials were pragmatic was unclear. Also, where data was available the included sample was predominantly female at 73.6%. Further participant characteristics such as ethnicity and other gender identities included were not elaborated on.