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SYSTEMATIC REVIEW article
Front. Psychol.
Sec. Health Psychology
Volume 16 - 2025 | doi: 10.3389/fpsyg.2025.1535349
A meta-analysis on the effectiveness of Traditional Chinese Medicine Emotional Nursing in improving anxiety and depression symptoms in elderly patients
Provisionally accepted- Hubei University of Chinese Medicine, Wuhan, China
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Background: This study used meta-analysis to explore the effectiveness of Traditional Chinese Medicine (TCM) emotional nursing intervention on the anxiety and depression of the elderly and factors that might influence this intervention, so as to provide reference for optimizing the effect of TCM emotional nursing for the elderly patients.Methods: Randomized controlled trials of TCM emotional nursing on improving anxiety and depression symptoms in elderly patients were searched from PubMed, Web of Science, Cochrane Library, Science Direct, China National Knowledge Infrastructure (CNKI), Wanfang Standards Database, and CQVIP. The Cochrane Collaboration' s tool was adopted for assessing risk of bias of studies, and CMA 3.3 was used for statistical analysis.Results: 39 literatures and 40 studies finally met the study standards, including 4425 patients. The results showed that TCM emotional nursing could improve the anxiety and depression symptoms of the elderly patients with a significant large effect (anxiety: g = 2.14, depression: g = 2.18). Subgroup analysis and meta-regression analysis showed that scale type, sample size and age of subjects affected the effect of intervention on anxiety. Sample size, age of subjects and course of disease affect the effect of intervention on depression.TCM emotional nursing can significantly improve the symptoms of anxiety and depression in the elderly. Future studies may further focus on the moderators of the Effectiveness of TCM emotional nursing intervention, and optimize the intervention plan.
Keywords: Anxiety, Depression, Meta-analysis, TCM emotional nursing, the elderly
Received: 27 Nov 2024; Accepted: 09 Apr 2025.
Copyright: © 2025 Zhao, Chen, Zhang, Huo, Yu, LAI and Liu. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY). The use, distribution or reproduction in other forums is permitted, provided the original author(s) or licensor are credited and that the original publication in this journal is cited, in accordance with accepted academic practice. No use, distribution or reproduction is permitted which does not comply with these terms.
* Correspondence: Jing Liu, Hubei University of Chinese Medicine, Wuhan, China
Disclaimer: All claims expressed in this article are solely those of the authors and do not necessarily represent those of their affiliated organizations, or those of the publisher, the editors and the reviewers. Any product that may be evaluated in this article or claim that may be made by its manufacturer is not guaranteed or endorsed by the publisher.