Sociodemographic Predictors and Moderators of Treatment Outcomes of Psychotherapeutic Interventions for Young People with Mental Disorders: A Systematic Review

Abstract

Despite the worrying prevalence of mental disorders among adolescents and young people, evidence on predictors of treatment outcome remains scarce. Systematic reviews have focused on specific disorders or treatment modalities and have not targeted this age group in particular. This systematic review presents an overview of the sociodemographic predictors and moderators on the outcome of psychotherapeutic interventions for adolescents and young people with mental disorders across treatment modalities. The search was conducted in PubMed and PsycINFO following the PICOS strategy. The included studies were clinical outcome studies on psychotherapeutic interventions, targeted for young people (aged 12–30 years) with specified mental disorders and published in peer-reviewed journals. During a four-step screening process, 17,359 articles were assessed, among which 114 met the inclusion criteria. Most included studies involved patients with mood, eating, or substance use disorders. Age, gender, and ethnicity were the most frequently reported predictors. For age and gender the findings were mixed, so it is not possible to state which age group or gender would benefit most from treatment across disorder groups. Ethnic minority status and history of traumatic events may predict poorer outcomes. However, the results mainly did not support the relevance of sociodemographic variables for predicting treatment outcome.

Process and outcome of outpatient psychotherapies under clinically representative conditions in Austria: protocol and feasibility of an ongoing study

“…Several patient factors (c), too, have been demonstrated to predict treatment outcomes, including age, gender, ethnicity, partnership status, comorbidity, self-reported disability, and personality disorder traits, among others (17,19,34). While Luborsky et al's early literature review (1971) (35) suggested better outcomes when therapist and patient genders align, Flückiger et al's (2018) above-mentioned meta-analytic synthesis on the alliance in adult psychotherapy (28) concluded that individual patient characteristics, including gender, generally have a small impact on treatment outcomes compared to other factors, such as the therapeutic alliance.…”