The Effects of Music Therapy on Depression Among Students

Background: Depression is among the commonest mental disorders. Most students experience different levels of depression. Therefore, developing modern strategies, other than medication therapy, is of paramount importance to the prevention and management of depression among students. Objectives: The aim of this study was to investigate the effects of music therapy on depression among male dormitory students of Birjand University of Medical Sciences, Birjand, Iran. Methods: This pretest-posttest quasi-experimental study was done on 236 male dormitory students, who had been recruited in the study through systematic random sampling. Eligible students completed the Beck Depression Inventory before and two months after the study intervention. The intervention included music therapy by using pieces of light soft music. The students were asked to listen to music tracks twenty minutes per day for two consecutive months. During these two months, they were monitored weekly to ensure their adherence to the intervention. The SPSS software (v. 16.0) was employed to analyze the data through running the Wilcoxon and the independent-sample t tests as well as the one-way analysis of variance at a significance level of 0.05. Results: About 37.7% of the students suffered from different levels of depression. There was a significant difference between the pretest and the posttest values of depression (P = 0.001). In other words, the study intervention significantly reduced the mean score of depression from 11.00  9.32 to 8.43  9.6. The study findings also indicated that score of depression in the students did not differ significantly with marital status, place of residence, faculties and college semesters (P > 0.05). Conclusions: The findings of the study indicated that music therapy is effective in alleviating depression. Therefore, it can be used to prevent and alleviate depression among dormitory students.