ArticlePLOS global public health2024
Treatments and interventions addressing chronic somatic pain in torture survivors: A systematic review.
Article in PLOS global public health, 2024. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 2 papers.
What it found
Each row is one number read from the abstract, on the scale the paper reported it, with its interval. Left of the dashed line favours the treatment, right favours the comparator. Under each row is the sentence it came from. New to these charts? A ten-minute tutorial.
The abstract states no effect estimate the extractor could read, or names no intervention and outcome on the map, so this paper lights no cell and moves no belief. It is still indexed, cited and linked below.
The trial behind it
Trials whose registry record cites this paper, or whose number appears in the abstract. A trial that started after this paper was published is citing it as background, not reporting it.
Neither the registry nor the abstract names a trial number. If this is a trial report, that itself is worth knowing.
Who cites it
2 citing papers in PubMed.
- Acceptability and Barriers to Chronic Pain Treatment in Refugee Torture Survivors.JAMA network open · 2025Article
- Torture and its sequelae among prostituted women in the United States.European journal of psychotraumatology · 2024Article
Corrections and comments
PubMed lists nothing against this paper. Absence here is not a guarantee, only a check that was made.
Authors and funding
6 authors.
Funding
Abstract
Torture survivors experience chronic, somatic pain that may be exacerbated by environmental, social, and structural factors that extend beyond immediate traumatic events and diagnoses. We conducted a systematic review of research describing the types and efficacy of treatments for chronic somatic pain in a global population of torture survivors. In this systematic review, we searched Ovid MEDLINE, Ovid EMBASE (1974 to present), and PubMed. We used all appropriate controlled vocabulary and keywords for interventions and treatments for chronic somatic pain in torture survivors. The population included survivors of torture of any age and in any country. Outcomes included pain relief, pain intensity, distress level, and quality of life. Four authors participated in screening, full-text review, and quality assessment, with each title and abstract being independently reviewed by two authors. This study is reported according to the PRISMA guidelines and registered in PROSPERO. We included six pre-post intervention studies and four pilot or modified randomized controlled trials (RCTs), for a total of ten studies included in the analysis. Different combinations of interventions targeted pain reduction in refugees, the majority of whom were torture survivors as the primary (n = 1) or secondary (n = 9) outcome. Sample sizes varied from eight to 470 participants. We identified three main types of interventions: multimodal combined, manual therapy, and specific types of talk therapy. Five studies demonstrated positive outcomes on pain and its intensity, three reported no effect, and two had mixed outcomes. Pain in torture survivors is often considered a symptom secondary to mental health illness and not targeted directly. Instead, combined interventions are mainly directed at posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD), depression, and anxiety. Most studies noted promising preliminary results and plans to conduct RCTs to increase the reproducibility and quality of their pilot data.
Identifiers
What OpenQuestion holds
Registered trials
Read under generation 80e0d062 · epoch 390. Bibliography from PubMed, PubMed Central and OpenAlex; grants from NIH RePORTER; trial links from ClinicalTrials.gov; estimates, votes and beliefs from the OpenQuestion graph.