Studies of psychosocial treatment interventions directed at participants 18 years or younger (maximum mean age 18 years) with behavioural or emotional problems were eligible for inclusion in the review. Included studies needed either 75 per cent of the sample to be ethnic minority or have separate analyses with ethnicity that showed superiority over a control/comparison, or analysis that indicated ethnicity was not a key moderator of outcomes or that treatment was effective in this sub-group despite moderator effects.
Included were African Americans, Latinos and mixed or other ethnic minorities with a range of problems (including anxiety, depression, aggression and delinquency). Treatment was defined as any intervention to alleviate psychological distress, reduce maladaptive behaviour or enhance adaptive behaviour through counselling, structured or unstructured interaction, a training programme or a predetermined treatment plan. Interventions focusing only on medication, teaching, reading, knowledge, relocation or primary prevention and those primarily focusing on any other predisposition than behavioural or emotional difficulties were excluded.
All included studies assigned participants randomly to an active treatment or a different comparative active treatment, no treatment, placebo or treatment-as-usual. A wide range of different active treatments (reported in the paper) were included. A range of outcome measures were included and these were summarised in terms of positive or negative effects of the intervention.
The authors stated neither how the papers were selected for the review nor how many reviewers performed the selection.