Assessing the efficacy of psychological interventions in enhancing the quality of life of patients diagnosed with cancer and psychiatric disorders: An umbrella analysis

Background. Psychosocial interventions encompass psychotherapy and psychological education that explicitly target psychosocial adaptation. These interventions have been shown to have a substantial positive effect on reducing anxiety and depression, as well as improving overall quality of life (QoL). Nevertheless, there is still no consensus concerning the therapeutic effectiveness of these interventions. Objectives. An umbrella review of systematic reviews and meta-analyses was conducted to determine the efficacy of psychological interventions in improving the QoL and psychological wellbeing of patients with cancer and mental illness. Materials and methods. A comprehensive literature search was conducted across multiple databases, namely PubMed, Embase, Scopus, and Cochrane Library. Assessing the Methodological Quality of Systematic Reviews 2 (AMSTAR-2) was used to evaluate research methodological rigor. Results. The 12 papers analyzed in this umbrella review explored psychological therapy for cancer and psychiatric patients. The included reviews covered in total 8,198 studies. The AMSTAR-2 rated 8 of 12 studies as high-quality and 4 as intermediate. A total of 369 studies examined cancer, 166 schizophrenia and 165 psychoses. Psychological therapy improved the QoL for cancer, schizophrenia and psychosis by 1.87, 1.48 and 1.61, respectively. Psychiatric and cancer patients have anxiety, sleep issues and a lower QoL. This umbrella study showed that psychological interventions improved QoL in both groups of patients. Conclusions. Psychological therapy appears to improve cancer and mental illness patients' QoL and wellbeing. Most evidence is from high- and middle-income nations. Therefore, further high-quality research that covers a larger geographical area and rigorous systematic reviews with complete meta-analyses is needed to gain useful insights in this field.