61 Review of social network intervention studies 2 Kane, Butler, & Ng, 2016). Altogether, these findings have clinical implications and may give directions to future research. For clinical implications, additional social network enhancing approaches to treatment as usual for psychiatric patients are needed (Lake & Turner, 2017; World Health Organization, 2021). Until now, international guidelines in the field of mental healthcare included recommendations regarding various approaches for different psychiatric populations. For example, family involvement and enhancement of supportive social networks is suggested for treatment of schizophrenia (Keepers et al., 2020), social network therapy for the treatment of substance use disorders (WorldHealthOrganization, 2015), and enhancement of supportive and close relationships is considered important in treatment of patients with bipolar disorders and suicidal behaviors (National Collaborating Centre for Mental Health UK, 2014). Based on our results, approaches targeting social network enhancement in real life can improve particular relevant outcomes in psychiatric patients receiving mental health treatment. Looking at personalized care, our findings suggest that these approaches might be even more effective in subgroups with more female patients. Elaborating on this, the potential sex difference regarding the effects of social network interventions could be explained by the different needs and coping strategies between females and males in response to stress or suffering. For example, previous research demonstrated that females tend to use more support from family and friends compared to males to cope with stressful situations (Day & Livingstone, 2003). Although more research is needed to clearly demonstrate the sex differences in the effectiveness of social network interventions among psychiatric patients, we hypothesize that female patients could bemore susceptible to these interventions, as they are more likely to perceive a need for support and utilize support provided or enhanced through these interventions. Subsequently, psychiatric symptoms are expected to decrease. However, more research is needed to explore which specific patients benefit more from social network interventions and how these interventions can be better adjusted to patient specific needs. Regarding directions for future research, additional high-powered RCTs including patient-level information are warranted to investigate the most optimal social network approaches in mental healthcare (Holmes et al., 2018). Some specific intervention characteristics deserve further exploration. For example, for reasons of cost-effectiveness, the effects of low-threshold and low-cost informal approaches versus more complex and costly formal approaches could be of particular interest, as we found no significant differences between these approaches in psychiatric patients. Although this study did not find evidence for different effects between formal and informal approaches as well as
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