Abstract
BACKGROUND: The main clinical guidelines for the treatment of post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) in children and adolescents are based on meta-analyses that may have become obsolete in the face of the large number of publications on the subject in recent years. OBJECTIVE: To conduct a systematic review of the most recent meta-analyses on the efficacy of psychological or pharmacological therapies for PTSD in children and adolescents. METHOD: We searched the bibliographic databases PsycINFO, PTSDpubs, and MEDLINE for meta-analyses published between 2020 and 2024. RESULTS: We found 15 meta-analyses, all of them on the efficacy of psychological therapies and none on pharmacological therapies. Their results regarding the reductions in PTSD symptomatology obtained with the different therapies and their comparison with those obtained in waiting list or active control conditions (e.g., treatment as usual, psychoeducation), allow us to confirm that there are effective treatments for childhood and adolescent PTSD and that these treatments are psychological. CONCLUSIONS: Currently, the treatment of first choice for childhood and adolescent PTSD is trauma-focused cognitive-behavioral therapy (TF-CBT) in any of its versions, with EMDR therapy as the best alternative among the second choice treatments.
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