A systematic review of rural community-based mental health interventions in the United States

BackgroundMental health impacts a person's quality of life and ability to engage in healthy behaviors. Rural communities in the United States have limited access to mental and behavioral health treatment.AimTo conduct a systematic review to identify existing rural community-based mental health interventions and identify commonalities and differences by extracting study attributes and intervention components.MethodsMarch 2022 CINAHL, EMBASE, PsycInfo, Scopus, and Academic Search Complete were searched for studies that met the inclusion criteria of rural, community-based mental health interventions in the United States.ResultsTen publications satisfied the criteria for this review. The most common intervention components identified were peer interaction, developed coping skills, and activity-based interventions.ConclusionWhile this review excluded a meta-analysis, it did illuminate the components of existing community-based mental health interventions and highlighted gaps in the current research. Our findings suggest that future community-based mental health interventions would benefit from the inclusion of peer interaction, coping skills development, activity-based, cultural & historical context, service referral, and spirituality. This review followed PRISMA 2020 guidelines, including the use of the PRISMA flow chart and checklist. The review was not registered with PROSPERO due to having already begun data extraction and registering is not permitted post-data extraction to prevent bias. However, iterative searches were conducted on PROSPERO to determine the relevance of this review.