According to a recent study, over 300 million people around the world have depression. By 2020, depression is expected to become the leading cause of disability. With an alarming statistic such as that, we wanted to provide a bit of light within the research: traditional treatments of depression are shown to work—with some patients—even better when experienced alongside music therapy.
“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.
“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.
More than 300 million people worldwide have depression, which is projected to become the leading cause of disability by 2020, Gold and colleagues write.
Music therapy can include passive approaches that involve listening, active treatments that involve playing an instrument or singing or participating in a musical performance, or some combination of these approaches. What sets therapy apart from other musical endeavors is that it is typically led by a person with training in counseling, psychology or treating depression.
Even though music therapy has long been used all over the world, research to date hasn’t offered a clear picture of its benefits, Gold said.
The last review of music therapy published by Cochrane in 2008 didn’t offer as much evidence of benefits, Gold said. A milestone study that came out in 2011 concluded that music could help but was only done in one country and left many unanswered questions, he said.
“The present review update confirms these findings and broadens them,” Gold said by email. “We still think that more research is needed; however, we feel that research on music therapy for depression can now turn to more specific questions, such as comparing different types of therapy to each other.”
Click here to read the complete article on Reuters.
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