Effectiveness of Stepped Care Psychological Interventions in Children and Adolescents: A Meta-Analytic Review

Stepped care has been proposed as an efficient and scalable framework for delivering pediatric psychotherapy. This meta-analysis examined the effectiveness, generalizability, and implementation characteristics of stepped care interventions for the prevention and treatment of mental health problems in children and adolescents. Across included studies, stepped care interventions demonstrated large significant overall pre–post improvements in health outcomes (d = 1.22, 95% CI [0.944; 1.50]). When compared with control conditions effects were small and non-significant (d = 0.09, 95% CI [-0.133; 0.