Addressing perfectionism in childhood and adolescence: Evidence from a systematic review.

Perfectionism is a multidimensional and complex personality trait whose research has been raised in the last two decades because of its close link with psychopathologies and its considerable prevalence in both clinical and community populations. Consequently, interventions should conduct in educational settings based on specific programs to reduce or prevent perfectionism. To this aim the present study aimed to identify the characteristics of effective interventions designed to reduce perfectionism, whether as a primary goal or not. A search strategy was implemented across the Web of Science, Scopus, PsycINFO, and Psicodoc databases, yielding a total of 3,297 studies. After applying seven exclusion criteria, the number of eligible studies was reduced to 14. However, two of the 14 studies had two intervention groups, and the other reported data by gender. Consequently, they were counted as independent treatments, obtaining 17 studies. Three of them tested online delivery modality, and 14 studies tested face-to-face delivery modality. All the studies used CBT, except three that used specific CBT for perfectionism and five that used other types. About participants, only three of the 17 interventions included families. Furthermore, one of the studies was carried out in a clinical sample, and four of them were conducted in subclinical samples. The remaining studies were conducted in community samples. The results suggest that it is essential to design interventions that consider children’s and adolescents’ cognitive abilities and external factors that may contribute to the development of perfectionistic traits. As a result, the development and recurrence of mental health problems could be reduced, leading to improved well-being in children and adolescents.__