The Effectiveness of Music Therapy on Self-Harm Behaviors and Executive Functions in Children with Autism Disorder

The autism is a neurodevelopmental disorder, which causes and increases psychological problems. Therefore, the aim of this study was determining the effectiveness of music therapy on self-harm behaviors and executive functions in children with autism disorder.

The present research was a quasi-experimental study with pretest and posttest design with a control group. The research population was male with autistic disorder that referred to counseling and occupational therapy centers of Ahvaz city in the second half of 2021 year, which from them number of 24 people after reviewing the inclusion criteria were selected by purposive sampling method and by simple randomly with lottery assigned into two equal groups. The experimental group trained 10 sessions of 45 minutes by music therapy method and the control group remained on the waiting list for training. Data were collected with demographic information form, self-harm inventory and executive function scale and were analyzed by chi-square and multivariate analysis of covariance tests in SPSS version 23 software.

The findings showed that there was no significant difference between the experimental and control groups in terms of age, educational grad and past time of autism disorder (P>0.05). Also, music therapy significantly reduced self-harm behaviors and significantly improved executive functions including self-management to time, self-organization/problem solving, self-restraint/inhibition, self-motivation and self-regulation of emotion in children with autism disorder (P<0.001).

The results of this research showed the effective role of music therapy in reducing self-harm behaviors and improving executive functions of children with autism disorder. Therefore, the use of music therapy along with other treatment methods can be effective to improve the psychological characteristics of children with autism disorder.