title: Meta-analysis for psychiatric research using free software R.
abstract: This paper provides a brief overview of meta-analysis (MA) with emphasis on classical fixedeffects and random-effects MA models. It illustrates the application of MA models with the open-source software R using publicly available data from five studies on lamotrigine to treat bipolar depression and finds that meta-analysis identifies a statistically significant advantage of lamotrigine over placebo that was not evident in the individual studies.
authors: School of Social Work, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, Chapel Hill, United States.
authors: Ding-Geng
authors: DG
authors: Chen
keywords: bipolar disorder; fixed-effects model; lamotrigine; meta-analysis; random-effects model