Review Psychotherapy in patients with long/post-COVID - A systematic review... 2025 Schurr et al

Full title: Psychotherapy in patients with long/post-COVID - A systematic review on the feasibility, acceptability, safety, and efficacy of available and emerging interventions.

Highlights

• One of the first reviews on psychotherapy for long/post-COVID.
• Psychotherapy has mostly been combined with other treatments for long/post-COVID.
• Psychotherapy for long/post-COVID is feasible and well accepted by patients.
• Few studies have used methodological rigor to assess psychotherapy efficacy.

Abstract

Backgrounds
There is an urgent need for effective treatments for patients with long/post-COVID. Current recommendations for management favor a multimodal approach including psychotherapy and emphasize that interventions should also consider the mental health impact of living with long/post-COVID. This systematic review synthesizes psychotherapeutic interventions that currently target long/post-COVID complaints and summarizes data on the feasibility, acceptability, safety, and efficacy of psychotherapy for patients with long/post-COVID.

Methods
This systematic review was conducted according to the PRISMA statement. Studies were retrieved from three databases (PubMed, PsycInfo, Web of Science) and independently assessed by two raters. Studies investigating patients of any age suffering from long/post-COVID were included if the intervention involved psychotherapeutic treatment and changes in long/post-COVID symptoms were reported. The review has been pre-registered on PROSPERO.

Results
A total of 12 studies were included in the analysis. Of these, 10 were multimodal approaches with integrated psychotherapeutic interventions, and two were studies on stand-alone psychotherapy. The majority of studies were uncontrolled and demonstrate pre-post improvements in a range of long/post-COVID symptoms. Only one RCT could be identified, which supports the benefit of CBT for COVID-related fatigue. It was not possible to draw general conclusions regarding the efficacy of psychotherapy for long/post-COVID. However, data on feasibility, acceptability, and safety support the potential of psychotherapy as a treatment approach for long/post-COVID.

Conclusion
Future studies investigating the potential of psychotherapy approach for long/post-COVID which go beyond the pilot stage are needed to systematically assess feasibility, acceptability, safety, and efficacy in large-scale confirmatory trials.

Open access

 

"Given the evidence linking for psychotherapeutic interventions to improvements in physical symptoms and quality of life, as well as reductions in mental health distress for long-term somatic conditions such as chronic fatigue in patients with viral infections like Epstein-Barr virus [17],"

Reference 17 is to
Chapter 25 - Chronic fatigue syndrome, 2013, Moss-Morris, Deary and Castell

 

Deary me..

 

impressively meaningless phrase

 

We can’t prove that it does anything, but we can definitely do it!

 

If "bias" were ever to be put in the form of a sentence. It actually crosses right over thirsty and onto horny territory.

It's especially ironic that the abstract begins with the need to find effective treatments. This isn't it, at all. The only relation this has to effective treatments is that the medical profession has avoided putting in the effort to develop those because of this excessive bias, fanatically seeking to promote a bunch of whiny BS instead of doing real work.

But they end up doing the work anyway. And the BS. If there's ever been a context in which advising to work smart, instead of hard, this is it.