Randomized Trial of Group Music Therapy With Chinese Prisoners

Abstract

This study investigated the effects of group music therapy on improving anxiety, depression, and self-esteem in Chinese prisoners. Two-hundred male prisoners were randomly assigned to music therapy (n = 100) or standard care (n = 100). The music therapy had 20 sessions of group therapy compared with standard care. Anxiety (State and Trait Anxiety Inventory [STAI]), depression (Beck Depression Inventory [BDI]), and self-esteem (Texas Social Behavior Inventory [TSBI], Rosenberg Self-Esteem Inventory [RSI]) were measured by standardized scales at baseline, mid-program, and post-program. Data were analyzed based on the intention to treat principle. Compared with standard care, anxiety and depression in the music therapy condition decreased significantly at mid-test and post-test; self-esteem improved significantly at mid-test (TSBI) and at post-test (TSBI, RSI). Improvements were greater in younger participants (STAI-Trait, RSI) and/or in those with a lower level of education (STAI-State, STAI-Trait). Group music therapy seems to be effective in improving anxiety, depression, and self-esteem and was shown to be most beneficial for prisoners of younger age or with lower education level.

Reviewing the Effectiveness of Music Interventions in Treating Depression

“…Medium sized groups of up to 100 participants were found in six articles (Gupta and Gupta, 2005; Castillo-Pérez et al, 2010; Erkkilä et al, 2011; Wang et al, 2011; Lu et al, 2013). Large groups with more than 100 (Koelsch et al, 2010; Silverman, 2011), or 200 (Chen et al, 2016) participants were the exception, and 236 participants (Chang et al, 2008) presented the upper end in our selection.…”

“…Within the last two decades, research on the use of music medicine or music therapy to treat depression, showed a growing popularity and several publications have appeared that documented this movement (e.g., Lee, 2000; Loewy, 2004; Esfandiari and Mansouri, 2014; Verrusio et al, 2014; Chen et al, 2016; Fancourt et al, 2016). However, most researchers used a very specific experimental setup (Hillecke et al, 2005) and thus, for example, focused only on one music genre (i.e., classical, modern; instrumental, vocal), used a predefined experimental setup (group or individual) (e.g., Kim et al, 2006; Chen et al, 2016), or specified precisely the age range (i.e., adolescents, elderly) of participants (e.g., Koelsch et al, 2010; Verrusio et al, 2014). A recent meta-analysis (Hole et al, 2015) reviewed 72 randomized controlled trials and concluded that music was a notable aid for reducing postoperative symptoms of anxiety and pain.…”

Identity and self-esteem in the context of music and music therapy: a review

“…The final sample included 9 studies of intervention effects (Aldridge et al, 2005;Chen, Hannibal, & Gold, 2016;Clendenon-Wallen, 1991;Grocke et al, 2014;Haines, 1989;Hanser & Thompson, 1994;Henderson, 1983;Sharma & Jagdev, 2012;Wu, 2002), 1 case study (Smeijsters & van den Hurk, 1999), 2 exploratory studies (Daykin, McClean, & Bunt, 2007;Pavlicevic, O'Neil, Powell, Jones, & Sampathianaki, 2014) and 2 theoretical articles (Amir, 2012;Gleadhill & Ferris, 2010). Sample sizes ranged from 1 (Smeijsters & van den Hurk, 1999) to 200 (Chen et al, 2016). Table 1 presents study characteristics of 9 papers presenting intervention effects.…”

“…We included types of participants with the following problems/diagnosis: adjustment reaction (Henderson, 1983), lacking crucial self-esteem and self-concept (Haines, 1989), severe learning disabilities (Pavlicevic et al, 2014), problems due to fear, depression, and low self-esteem (Wu, 2002), low self-esteem and high academic stress (Sharma & Jagdev, 2012), adolescents who had been sexually abused in the past (Clendenon-Wallen, 1991), prisoners (Chen et al, 2016), severe mental illness (Grocke et al, 2014), depression of various degrees of severity and schizophrenia (Hanser & Thompson, 1994), an adult woman who had problems in finding her personal identity and suffered badly from grief, low self-esteem, and feelings of depression (Smeijsters & van den Hurk, 1999), patients diagnosed with cancer (Daykin et al, 2007), multiple sclerosis (Aldridge et al, 2005), and dissociative identity disorder (Gleadhill & Ferris, 2010). In summary, 5 trials included children up to 18 years old, and 6 concerned adults.…”

“…This approach not only makes the entire healing process more flexible, but also develops aesthetic feelings, which patients might have been unable to experience on a daily basis. The issue of social consequences of working with musical identity can be found in a study by Chen et al (2016). In this randomized controlled trial, 200 Chinese prisoners with anxiety or depression (all of them males from one prison) were allocated to MT or SC.…”