Background. Like evidence-based medicine, clinical psychology is interested in obtaining results that can be extrapolated to many areas of studying the human psyche. Meta-analysis is the method of obtaining results that can be used in other areas of psychological research. The study of meta-analysis in relation to clinical psychology is of particular importance.
The Objective of this research is to analyze the features of using meta-analysis in clinical psychology, to show its limitations and procedure. Design. At the initial stage of our theoretical research, the main directions and tasks of using meta-analysis in clinical psychology were analyzed. The next step was the description of the meta-analytical clinical and psychological research procedure. The solution of tasks identified in this work are the basis of meta-analytical research in clinical psychology.
Results. In clinical and psychological research, meta-analysis was found to be used in evaluating the effectiveness of behavioural, cognitive, and cognitive-behavioural therapy, psycho-pharmacological interventions in schizophrenia, anxiety and depressive disorders, chronic fatigue, personality pathology, and autistic spectrum disorders.
A separate part of the research embraces the assessment results of the influence of various factors on the psychopathology. The difficulties of using meta-analysis in clinical psychology were described.
Conclusion. Meta-analysis is a powerful tool for obtaining data in clinical psychology; thanks to him, it becomes possible to generalize the results of a multitude of clinical and psychological studies and to evaluate the effectiveness of various types of psychosocial interventions.
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Keywords: meta-analysis; clinical psychology; psychotherapy; meta-analysis procedure;
Available Online 31.12.2019
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