The impact of psychological interventions on anxiety and depression in cancer pain patients: A meta-analysis.

BACKGROUND

Cancer pain is frequently accompanied by anxiety and depression, which severely impair patients' quality of life. Although psychological interventions are widely applied in clinical practice, their overall effect on alleviating anxiety and depression among cancer pain patients remains to be systematically evaluated.

METHODS

This meta-analysis strictly followed the Preferred Reporting Items for Systematic Reviews and Meta-Analyses 2020 guidelines. Randomized controlled trials of psychological intervention for anxiety and depression in cancer pain patients were searched across PubMed, Web of Science, Embase, the Cochrane Library, Wanfang, China national knowledge infrastructure, VIP, and China Biomedical Literature Database from inception to May 21, 2025. According to the Cochrane systematic assessment method, literature screening, quality evaluation, and information extraction were carried out by 2 independent reviewers. Meta-analysis was conducted with RevMan 5.3 software, including heterogeneity test, effect size pooling, sensitivity analysis, subgroup analysis, and publication bias assessment.

RESULTS

A total of 11 randomized controlled trials involving 879 patients (440 in the intervention group and 439 in the control group) were included. Pooled analysis showed that psychological interventions significantly reduced anxiety scores (weighted mean difference = -8.82, 95% confidence interval [-10.52, -7.12], P < .001) and depression scores (weighted mean difference = -9.39, 95% confidence interval [-11.79, -6.98], P < .001) in cancer pain patients compared with conventional care. Sensitivity analysis confirmed the robustness of the results, and prespecified subgroup analyses (by intervention duration, mean age, sex ratio) failed to identify significant sources of heterogeneity. Funnel plots combined with Begg and Egger tests indicated no significant publication bias.

CONCLUSION

Psychological intervention can effectively improve the anxiety and depression of cancer patients during chemotherapy, and future studies need to pay attention to the impact of factors such as the type of cancer, cancer pain, patient population, and specific psychological interventions.