Music Therapy May Alleviate Depression

Music Therapy May Alleviate Depression

By helping the masses express their emotions, music therapy, whereas combined with standard care, appears to have existence an effective treatment for depression, at least in the short term, said researchers from the University of Jyvskyl in Finland who compose about their findings in the August conclusion of the British Journal of Psychiatry.

Study leaders Professor Jaakko Erkkil and Professor Christian Gold, and colleagues, recruited 79 the bulk of mankind of working age (18 to 50 years cunning) living in Finland, who had been diagnosed by depression using the ICD-10 Classification of Mental and Behavioural Disorders.

The participants were randomly assigned to suffer twenty, 60-minute sessions of individual minstrelsy therapy plus standard care (33 the masses), or standard care only (46 men). In Finland, standard care for abasement comprises antidepressant medication, 5 to 6 sessions of individual psychotherapy, and psychiatric counselling.

Twice a week, with the help of trained music therapists, in individual-to-one sessions, the participants in the intervention group learned how to improvise harmony using a mallet instrument, a crash instrument or an acoustic, West African djembe drum.

On average, each participant in this assemblage attended 18 sessions with 88% (29 individuals) attending at least 15 sessions.

The researchers clinically assessed completely participants at the start of the study, therefore at 3 months and 6 months afterwards. The charge included taking measures of depression, uneasiness, general functioning, quality of life and alexithymia (lack of power to express feelings with words).

The researchers set that:

After 3 months, the participants receiving melody therapy and standard care showed greater bettering than those receiving standard care solitary in symptoms of depression (mean deviation 4.65, 95% Confidence Interval CI 0.59 to 8.70), apprehension (1.82, 95% CI 0.09 to 3.55) and inexact functioning (-4.58, 95% CI -8.93 to -0.24).

However, on the model of 6 months, although the improvements were in continuance evident, the differences between the groups were ~t any longer statistically significant.

They concluded that:

"Individual score therapy combined with standard care is potent for depression among working-age rabble with depression. The results of this study side by side with the previous research indicate that science of harmonical sounds therapy with its specific qualities is a valuable enhancement to established treatment practices. "

Gold told the crush that:

"Music therapy has specific qualities that yield people to express themselves and interact in a non-word for word way - even in situations when they cannot perceive the words to describe their internal experiences."

Erkkil agreed, adding that they lay the ~ation of people often expressed what they were sense of touch by drumming, or with the tones they made by a mallet instrument.

"Some people described their playing continued as cathartic," added Erkkil.

One fashion to interpret these results is that the music therapy helped, but only while it was ongoing, that is for the time of the first three months of the study.

However, even if small, the trial appears to have ~ing well-designed and conducted, as Dr Mike Crawford, a specialist in intellectual health services at the Centre as antidote to Mental Health, Imperial College London, in the UK, writes in an accompanying journal editorial:

"This is a bragging-quality randomised trial of music therapy specifically as being depression, and the results suggest that it have power to improve the mood and general functioning of tribe with depression."

"Music-making is neighborly, pleasurable and meaningful. It has been argued that symphony making engages people in ways that altercation may simply not be able to," he adds.

Erkkil afore~ someone now needs to replicate the tools and materials "with a larger sample of lower classes, and further research is needed to assess the cost-effectiveness of such therapy".

Written ~ dint of. Catharine Paddock, PhD
Copyright: Medical News Today
Not to exist reproduced without permission of Medical News Today

Article Reference:
"Individual score therapy for depression: Randomised controlled touchstone."
Erkkil J, Punkanen M, Fachner J, Ala-Ruona E, Pnti I, Tervaniemi M, Vanhala M and Gold C.
British Journal of Psychiatry 2011; 199: 132-139. doi: 10.1192/bjp.bp.110.085431
Link to Abstract.

"Music therapy notwithstanding depression: it seems to work, nevertheless how?"
Maratos A, Crawford MJ and Procter S.
British Journal of Psychiatry 2011; 199: 92-93. doi: 10.1192/bjp.bp.110.087494
Link to Abstract.

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