Interventions to support the mental health of family carers of children with brain injury in low and middle income countries: a scoping review.
M A Linden, R Leonard, L Ewing-Cobbs and 2 others
PMID 39268477WHAT IT FOUND
A review of interventions for family carers of children with brain injury in low and middle-income countries found only one eligible study.
In that study, group interpersonal psychotherapy significantly reduced caregiver depression risk compared to usual care at one and six months.
Key findings
01Only one study met the inclusion criteria for this review, highlighting a severe lack of published research on mental health support for family carers of children with brain injury in low and middle-income countries.
02The included study in Uganda found that group interpersonal psychotherapy delivered by community health workers significantly reduced the risk of depression in caregivers compared to usual care at one and six months post-intervention.
03The review notes that interventions developed in high-income countries, such as online support tools, are untested in low and middle-income settings due to potential barriers like cost and lack of internet access.
STILL TO COME
How it was doneWhat they found
Read the rest of this summary
You get three full summaries a month, free, and we do not ask for a card. Search, the TL;DRs and your library stay unlimited either way.
What it does not show
The review identified only one eligible study, limiting the ability to draw broad conclusions or perform meta-analysis. The search was restricted to English-language publications, potentially missing relevant studies from LMICs. The included study did not define what 'usual care' consisted of, making it difficult to know exactly what the intervention was compared against. The included study focused on nodding syndrome, a condition unique to Sub-Saharan Africa, which may limit generalizability to other causes of acquired brain injury. The review excluded studies that trained carers to support their children, even if those studies might have had secondary benefits for carer mental health, narrowing the scope of available evidence.
Declared interests
The authors declare no conflicts of interest. The included study was funded by awards based in Canada and the USA.
The easy way to misread this
Do not assume that the positive results from the single included study apply broadly to all family carers of children with brain injury in all LMICs. The evidence base is extremely thin, consisting of one trial in Uganda focused on a specific condition (nodding syndrome), so generalizing this to other contexts or causes of brain injury is not supported by this review.