High-risk professionals are often exposed to traumatic events at work. Social support is a key protective factor for mental health outcomes, making it a potentially effective component for interventions targeting high-risk professionals. This review aimed to identify interventions that incorporate social support and highlight the aspects that influence their effectiveness for the prevention and treatment of post-trauma psychopathology in high-risk professionals. The search identified 546 articles, 23 of which met eligibility criteria. Twenty interventions were prevention-oriented, and three were treatment-focused. Improvements in social support outcomes and PTSD symptoms were reported across studies, while evidence for other post-trauma psychopathology was limited. For both preventive and therapeutic interventions, higher effectiveness was associated with more sessions, active skill training and sustained engagement with support sources. Peer support was specifically associated with effectiveness in preventive interventions, while partner support emerged as particularly beneficial in treatment settings. Moreover, treatment-oriented interventions reported more substantial effect sizes compared to preventive interventions, but further research is needed to confirm this pattern. Results indicate that interventions should focus on training social support skills (e.g., support-seeking behaviours) and promoting active and sustained engagement with available support sources to effectively prevent or treat PTSD symptoms. Future studies should explicitly evaluate social support as an active component of both preventive and therapeutic interventions to establish its role as a mechanism of change.
Eșanu et al. (Sun,) studied this question.