Meta-review of high-quality systematic reviews of interventions in key areas of liaison psychiatry.

BACKGROUND When planning and delivering a liaison psychiatry service it is important to have an understanding of the research evidence supporting the use of interventions likely to be delivered by the service. AIMS To identify high-quality systematic reviews for all interventions in three defined areas of liaison psychiatry, to summarise their clinical implications and to highlight areas where more research is needed. The three areas were the psychological effects of physical illness or treatment, somatoform disorders and self-harming behaviour. METHOD Computerised database searching, secondary reference searching, hand-searching and expert consultation were used to identify relevant systematic reviews. Studies were reliably selected, and quality-assessed, and data were extracted and interpreted by two reviewers. RESULTS We found 64 high-quality systematic reviews. Only 14 reviews included meta-analyses. CONCLUSIONS Many areas of liaison psychiatry practice are not based on high-quality evidence. More research in this area would help inform development and planning of liaison psychiatry services.