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  • One-year recovery rates for young people with depression and/or anxiety not receiving treatment: a systematic review and meta-analysis

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Mental health
Original research
One-year recovery rates for young people with depression and/or anxiety not receiving treatment: a systematic review and meta-analysis
  1. Anna Roach1,
  2. Diliniya Stanislaus Sureshkumar1,
  3. Kathryn Elliot1,
  4. Liliana Hidalgo-Padilla2,
  5. Francois van Loggerenberg1,3,
  6. Lauren Hounsell1,
  7. Zivile Jakaite1,
  8. Fernando Esnal4,
  9. Jade Donaghy1,
  10. Victoria Jane Bird1,
  11. Stefan Priebe1
  1. 1Unit of Social and Community Psychiatry (WHO Collaborating Centre for Mental Health Service Development), Queen Mary University of London, London, UK
  2. 2CRONICAS Center of Excellence in Chronic Diseases, Universidad Peruana Cayetano Heredia, Lima, Peru
  3. 3Youth Resilience Unit, Centre for Psychiatry and Mental Health, Wolfson Institute of Population Health, Queen Mary University of London, London, UK
  4. 4Department of Psychiatry and Mental Health, School of Medicine, Universidad de Buenos Aires, Buenos Aires, Argentina
  1. Correspondence to Diliniya Stanislaus Sureshkumar; d.s.sureshkumar{at}qmul.ac.uk

Abstract

Objectives To systematically review 1-year recovery rates for young people experiencing depression and/or anxiety who are not receiving any specific mental health treatment.

Design Systematic review and meta-analysis.

Data sources MEDLINE, Embase, PsycINFO, Web of Science and Global Health were searched for articles published from 1980 through to August 2022.

Eligibility criteria Articles were peer-reviewed, published in English and had baseline and 1-year follow-up depression and/or anxiety outcomes for young people aged 10–24 years without specific treatment.

Data extraction and synthesis Three reviewers extracted relevant data. Meta-analysis was conducted to calculate the proportion of individuals classified as recovered after 1 year. The quality of evidence was assessed by the Newcastle-Ottawa Scale.

Results Of the 17 250 references screened for inclusion, five articles with 1011 participants in total were included. Studies reported a 1-year recovery rate of between 47% and 64%. In the meta-analysis, the overall pooled proportion of recovered young people is 0.54 (0.45 to 0.63).

Conclusions The findings suggest that after 1 year about 54% of young people with symptoms of anxiety and/or depression recover without any specific mental health treatment. Future research should identify individual characteristics predicting recovery and explore resources and activities which may help young people recover from depression and/or anxiety.

PROSPERO registration number CRD42021251556.

  • mental health
  • child & adolescent psychiatry
  • depression & mood disorders
  • anxiety disorders

Data availability statement

All data relevant to the study are included in the article or uploaded as supplementary information.

https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/

This is an open access article distributed in accordance with the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 Unported (CC BY 4.0) license, which permits others to copy, redistribute, remix, transform and build upon this work for any purpose, provided the original work is properly cited, a link to the licence is given, and indication of whether changes were made. See: https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/.

https://doi.org/10.1136/bmjopen-2023-072093

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    Data availability statement

    All data relevant to the study are included in the article or uploaded as supplementary information.

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    Footnotes

    • Twitter @anna_roach_

    • Contributors AR and SP came up with the research question. AR, DSS and LH-P led data extraction with KE, FvL, LH, ZJ, FE and JD assisting with title and abstract screening and then full text screening. AR, DSS, KE and VJB analysed the included papers. AR and DSS drafted the manuscript and all provided feedback on the paper before submission. AR is responsible for the overall content, and acts as the guarantor.

    • Funding This work is supported by the Medical Research Council (grant number: MR/S03580X/1).

    • Competing interests None declared.

    • Patient and public involvement Patients and/or the public were not involved in the design, or conduct, or reporting, or dissemination plans of this research.

    • Provenance and peer review Not commissioned; externally peer reviewed.

    • Supplemental material This content has been supplied by the author(s). It has not been vetted by BMJ Publishing Group Limited (BMJ) and may not have been peer-reviewed. Any opinions or recommendations discussed are solely those of the author(s) and are not endorsed by BMJ. BMJ disclaims all liability and responsibility arising from any reliance placed on the content. Where the content includes any translated material, BMJ does not warrant the accuracy and reliability of the translations (including but not limited to local regulations, clinical guidelines, terminology, drug names and drug dosages), and is not responsible for any error and/or omissions arising from translation and adaptation or otherwise.