A Meta-analysis of the Effect of Motivational Interviewing on Depression, Anxiety, and Quality of Life in Stroke Patients

BACKGROUND: Motivational interviewing has become a popular approach for relieving mood disturbances. We aimed to investigate whether motivational interviewing can effectively improve depression, anxiety, and quality of life among stroke patients. METHODS: Seven electronic databases were searched from inception to March 15, 2021. Other potentially related studies were identified through manually searching the reference lists of empirical articles and relevant review articles. Randomized controlled trials that investigated the effects of motivational interviewing on stroke patients with mood disturbances were deemed eligible. The Cochrane Handbook 5.1.0 was used to assess the risk of bias. Meta-analyses were conducted using the Review Manager Version 5.3. RESULTS: Six articles with 1419 participants were included. The subgroup analysis revealed that motivational interviewing was associated with improvement of depression (P < .00001) and quality of life (P = .0007) among patients having stroke at less than 12 months of follow-up. No significant differences were detected for improving depression (P = .40) and quality of life (P = .38) at 12 months of follow-up. Furthermore, the meta-analysis showed that motivational interviewing was not associated with alleviation of anxiety (P = .81) among stroke patients. CONCLUSION: This meta-analysis indicated that motivational interviewing might have beneficial effects on depression and quality of life in stroke patients at less than 12 months of follow-up. However, large and well-designed randomized controlled trials are needed to confirm these findings.