Session: Advancing Evidence-Based Trauma Interventions for Displaced Populations: Insights from Systematic Reviews and Network Meta-Analyses (Society for Social Work and Research 31st Annual Conference)

Populations displaced by conflict, persecution, and mass casualty events carry disproportionate burdens of trauma-related mental illness, yet the evidence guiding their care remains fragmented across heterogeneous individual studies. This symposium addresses that gap by presenting four systematic reviews and network meta-analyses (NMAs) that synthesize and rank psychosocial interventions for trauma across the lifespan and across distinct displacement contexts. In doing so, it exemplifies the conference theme of advancing rigorous inquiry for the common good: deploying the highest level of evidence synthesis available to serve communities whose needs are both urgent and persistently underserved.

Systematic reviews and NMAs sit at the apex of the evidence hierarchy. By pooling findings across dozens of trials, they yield more reliable and generalizable conclusions than any single study can provide. NMA goes further, ranking competing interventions simultaneously, even those never directly compared, enabling researchers and clinicians to make evidence-informed priority decisions in complex, resource-constrained settings. Applying this level of rigor to displaced and marginalized populations reflects an intentional commitment to equity-driven scholarship.

Two presentations focus on adult refugees. The first synthesizes 11 randomized controlled trials of culturally adapted interventions for PTSD, finding EMDR to have the strongest and most consistent evidence while identifying three adaptation domains—context, content, and evaluation—and exposing a critical gap in linking specific modifications to outcomes. The second examines group-based interventions across 19 studies, demonstrating improvements in PTSD, depression, and anxiety and positioning group formats as both clinically effective and culturally congruent, given their alignment with collectivist values and their capacity to reduce social isolation in post-resettlement settings. Together, these papers offer complementary individual and collective pathways to refugee mental health.

The remaining two papers extend the evidence base across populations and severity contexts. A network meta-analysis of 35 trials among forcibly displaced children and youth finds that trauma-focused approaches, NET, EMDR, and TF-CB, outperform inactive controls for PTSD and anxiety, while no intervention achieves consistent effects for depression, pointing to structural post-migration stressors that individual treatment alone cannot address. A fourth NMA of 42 trials across 23 countries examines adults exposed to mass casualty events, including civilians, first responders, and humanitarian workers. Testimony Therapy and early EMDR emerge as top-ranked for PTSD and depression, while Problem Management Plus shows strong potential for task-shared, low-resource deployment in emergency response contexts.

Together, these four papers provide social work researchers, practitioners, and policymakers with an integrated, high-rigor synthesis of trauma intervention evidence spanning children to adults, refugees to disaster survivors, and individual to group modalities. Attendees will leave with concrete guidance on intervention prioritization, cultural adaptation, and the structural factors that shape mental health outcomes in displacement contexts. The symposium also advances a broader argument for the field: that systematic reviews and network meta-analyses are not merely methodological achievements but instruments of social justice—tools for ensuring that the most rigorous evidence serves the populations who need it most.