Psychosocial interventions for disruptive behaviour problems in children in low‐ and middle‐income countries: a systematic review and meta‐analysis
Bibliographic record
Abstract
Background Most of the evidence for psychosocial interventions for disruptive behaviour problems comes from Western, high‐income countries. The transferability of this evidence to culturally diverse, low‐resource settings with few mental health specialists is unknown. Methods We conducted a systematic review with random‐effects meta‐analysis of randomized controlled trials examining the effects of psychosocial interventions on reducing behaviour problems among children (under 18) living in low‐ and middle‐income countries (LMIC). Results Twenty‐six randomized controlled trials (representing 28 psychosocial interventions), evaluating 4,441 subjects, met selection criteria. Fifteen (54%) prevention interventions targeted general or at‐risk populations, whereas 13 (46%) treatment interventions targeted children selected for elevated behaviour problems. Most interventions were delivered in group settings (96%) and half (50%) were administered by non‐specialist providers. The overall effect (standardized mean difference, SMD) of prevention studies was −0.25 (95% confidence interval (CI): −0.41 to −0.09; I 2 : 78%) and of treatment studies was −0.56 (95% CI: −0.51 to −0.24; I 2 : 74%). Subgroup analyses demonstrated effectiveness for child‐focused (SMD: −0.35; 95% CI: −0.57 to −0.14) and behavioural parenting interventions (SMD: −0.43; 95% CI: −0.66 to −0.20), and that interventions were effective across age ranges. Conclusions Our meta‐analysis supports the use of psychosocial interventions as a feasible and effective way to reduce disruptive behaviour problems among children in LMIC. Our study provides strong evidence for child‐focused and behavioural parenting interventions, interventions across age ranges and interventions delivered in groups. Additional research is needed on training and supervision of non‐specialists and on implementation of effective interventions in LMIC settings.
Fetched live from OpenAlex and de-inverted. Abstracts are not stored in this database: the inverted indexes are 8.6 GB of the frame’s 9.3 GB of text, and the host has 13 GB free.
How this classification was reachedexpand
Full frame machine prediction
Teacher imitationNot calibrated prevalence, not ground truth. Human validation pending. The Gemma side is a direct model label for every work in the frame, read from the title-only record. The Codex side is a classifier learned from the 10,348 direct Codex labels and calibrated to design-weighted sample rates; fields without enough sample support carry no Codex call. Candidate is the union of the two sides; consensus is their intersection. These outputs are machine_predicted_unvalidated and are not human labels.
Distilled classifier scores by category (both heads)
| Category | Codex | Gemma |
|---|---|---|
| Metaresearch | 0.011 | 0.027 |
| Meta-epidemiology (narrow) | 0.003 | 0.001 |
| Meta-epidemiology (broad) | 0.021 | 0.029 |
| Bibliometrics | 0.008 | 0.007 |
| Science and technology studies | 0.001 | 0.001 |
| Scholarly communication | 0.003 | 0.002 |
| Open science | 0.002 | 0.002 |
| Research integrity | 0.002 | 0.002 |
| Insufficient payload (model declined to judge) | 0.004 | 0.000 |
Machine scores (provisional)
The two teacher heads of the student model, read on this work. A score orders the frame for review; it never asserts a category, and the validation status ships verbatim with every row.
Baseline scores from an immature model (maturity gate not passed, 7 training rounds). Scores rank; they never assert a category.
score_only:v0-immature-baseline · verbatim from the scoring run: score_only means the number may rank works, and no category label ships from itClassification
machine, unvalidatedMachine predicted; a candidate call from one source (direct Gemma or distilled Codex), not a consensus.
How this classification was reached, model by model and score by score, is at the end of the page under "How this classification was reached".