Mental Health Update | Does listening to music help ease Depression?
Traditional depression treatments like psychotherapy or medication might work better for some patients when doctors add a dose of music therapy.
Researchers examined data on 421 people who participated in nine previously completed short-term experiments testing the benefits of music therapy on its own or added to traditional interventions for depression.
Overall, the analysis found patients felt less depressed when music was added to their treatment regimen, according to the analysis in the Cochrane Library. Music therapy also appeared to help ease anxiety and improve functioning in depressed individuals, and it appeared just as safe as traditional treatments.
“We can now be more confident that music therapy in fact improves patients’ symptoms and functioning, and that this finding holds across a variety of settings, countries, types of patients, and types of music therapy,” said senior study author Christian Gold of Uni Research Health in Bergen, Norway.