The prognosis for children with serious somatic illness is better today than a decade ago and more children are living with chronic disease. However, studies have shown that children with serious somatic illness have a two or three times greater risk of developing mental, social or family problems than healthy children. It is important to identify interventions that may improve mental health in children with severe somatic illness.

This overview of systematic reviews presents findings from systematic reviews of high quality, which summarizes the results on the efficacy of psychological interventions provided in primary care for children with severe somatic illness. We included ten systematic reviews presenting results from 21 primary studies relevant to our problem. The studies primarily dealt with psychological interventions for children with asthma and diabetes. The documentation shows that:

• Conclusions could not be drawn about the effect of psychological interventions provided by professionals in primary care on mental health conditions such as anxiety, depression, quality of life, coping and psychosocial function for children with serious somatic illness.
• A meta-analysis of four studies of children with type 1 diabetes showed that psychological interventions such as cognitive behavioral therapy, support and counseling by psychologist and family systems therapy might possibly contribute to better mental health.

In general, the results from the included studies did not show any statistically significant difference between the differing interventions. One should however, not assume that no documentation of difference equates to documenting that there is no difference. Most of the studies had few participants and large variations.