Improvisational music therapy and perception of emotions in music by people with depression
Year: 2011
Type: dissertation
Study design: Clinical Trial
Abstract: (PDF)Depression is a highly prevalent mood disorder and a disabling disease that causes problems such as a reduction in quality of life and loss of general functioning.The present work investigated the perception and preferences of emotions in music by depressed patients and the efficacy of improvisational, individual music therapy for depression.The aim was to increase understanding of how depression affects emotional processing and emotion-regulation and how music and music therapy can be used in the treatment of depression.In main RCT-study participants (n=79) with an ICD-10 diagnosis of depression were randomized to receive individual music therapy plus standard care or standard care only, and followed up at baseline, at 3 months and at 6 months.Clinical measures included depression, anxiety, general functioning, quality of life and alexithymia.To investigate how depressed patients differ in their perception of emotions conveyed by musical examples, both depressed (n=79) and nondepressed (n=30) participants were presented with a set of 30 musical excerpts, representing one of five basic target emotions, and asked to rate each excerpt using five Likert scales that represented the amount of each one of those same emotions perceived in the example.To investigate how depressed patients differ in their preferences for music excerpts, both depressed and non-depressed participants were presented with 2 sets of 30 musical excerpts that represented the basic emotions (anger, sadness, and happiness), as well as different points on the 2-dimensional model of emotions (valence and energetic arousal).The main RCT-study showed that participants receiving music therapy and standard care showed greater improvement than those receiving standard care only in depression symptoms, anxiety symptoms and general functioning at 3 months follow-up.In sub-study 1 depressed patients showed moderate but consistent negative self-report biases both in the overall use of the scales and their particular application to certain target emotions, when compared to nondepressed controls.In sub-study 2 depressed patients were found to dislike music that was highly energetic, arousing, or angry.
Author: Marko Punkanen
Language: English
Topic: Music Therapy and Health
Subfield: Social Psychology
Field: Psychology
Domain: Social Sciences
Open Access status: green
OpenAlex ID: W227772146