Emotional experience of music by psychiatric patients compared with normal subjects

Abstract

Psychiatric patients (n = 107) and normal subjects (n = 100) were exposed to seven newly composed pieces of music orchestrated for a small symphony orchestra. The patients were divided into seven subgroups: schizophrenic, depressive and manic psychosis; obsessive, depressive, anxiety and hysterical neurosis. All subjects rated the music on semantic differential scales describing three factors of emotional experience: tension-relaxation, gaiety-gloom and attraction-repulsion. The ratings by patients in the different groups were compared with those by the normal subjects. Expressiveness in music was found to be communicated to patients in the same relative way as to normals. However, in the various diagnostic groups, several marked differences in experience were demonstrated. The main findings were that schizophrenic psychotics experienced the music as more attractive, while depressive and anxiety neurotics experienced it as less attractive, than normals. Depressive and manic psychotics experienced the music as less gay. Obsessive neurotics seem to be more sensitive to tension than normals.

On Perception of Complex Sound in Schizophrenia and Mania

“…The rating form has been used in earlier studies and it consists of 12 scales with 7 steps. Four of the scales (tense-relaxed, violent -peaceful, h ard -so ft and threatening -enticing) represent a factor tension -re laxation (factor I), the next four (happy -sad, humor ous -serious, impulsive -controlled, active -passive) a factor called gaiety-gloom (factor II) and the re maining four scales (rich-poor, beautiful -disgust ing, profound -superficial, clear -diffuse) a factor at traction -repulsion (factor III) [8], The factor scores may theoretically vary from 4 to 28 in each factor: low scores signify more tension, gaiety and attraction expo rienced respectively, and high scores the opposite, i.e. more relaxation, gloom and repulsion.…”

“…The three factors explained 64.5% of the variance in the rotated matrix. The factors arc pre sented in table l and mean factor scores of the vari ables are presented in table 2 [8]. In the computation process the mean factor scores arc normalized to a dis tribution with mean = 0 and SD = 1.…”

“…This was also assessed by Peretti and Swensson [7] in studies of effects of music and anxiety as determined by physiological skin responses. According to an investigation by Nielzen and Cesarec [8] schizophrenic psy chotics rate complex music as more attractive than any other psychopathological group or group of normal subjects. In the same study manic psychotics like depressives show an inability to rate music of a happy mood as being so.…”

Procesamiento de la música en el primer episodio de trastorno depresivo mayor sin tratamiento

“…Los estudios conductuales son los de Nielzèn, 4 Punkanen 5 y Naranjo. 6 Los principales hallazgos de esos estudios fueron: Primero, al igual que en nuestro trabajo los pacientes con depresión muestran menos reactividad a la música; y segundo, se confirma en pacientes con TDM un sesgo negativo en las emociones y el reconocimiento de estímulos interpersonales que también afectan a la forma de percibir la música.…”

Music Psychopathology

“…Manics seem to prefer faster tempi, which they regard as more cheerful than controls [3,12,14]. Depressives rated 7 orchestral pieces less attractive than sane ref erence persons, whereas schizophrenic pa tients experienced them more positively [4], Acute schizophrenics did not differ from …”