Role of Music Therapy in Reducing the Symptoms of Depression and Anxiety

A variety of psychological factors can manipulate the severity of premenstrual syndrome.

This study aimed to investigate the role of music therapy in reducing anxiety and depression in premenstrual syndrome.

This quasi-experimental study was conducted based on a pretest-posttest method with a control group. The statistical population of this study included 30 women with the premenstrual syndrome who were referred to Rah-e-Bartar Clinic, Tehran, Iran, in the first six months of 2019. They were then selected voluntarily and assigned randomly in two groups of experimental and control (15 cases per group). Subsequently, the participants were requested to complete Beckchr('39')s Anxiety Test and Beckchr('39')s Depression Test before and after the intervention. A researcher-made music-therapy program was used as the therapeutic intervention. The experimental group was then asked to participate in 12 sessions of music therapy each lasted for 45 min (two sessions per week). At the end of the intervention, the experimental group re-completed the tests at the posttest phase, and the data were analyzed using one-way analysis of variance.

According to the results, after comparing the experimental and control groups at the posttest, the anxiety (Sig=0.06; F=0.12) and depression (Sig=0.09, F=0.10) scores were obtained greater than 0.05.  

It can be concluded that music therapy was effective in reducing the psychological symptoms of premenstrual syndrome, two of the most important of which are anxiety and depression.