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Depression
Music therapy has been found to have numerous significant outcomes for patients with major depressive disorder. One study found that listening to soft, sedative music for only 30 minutes a day for two weeks led to significantly improved global depressive scores, and improved scores on individual depressive sub-scales. Like many of the other studies mentioned, the effects were seen to be cumulative over the time period studied – that is, longer treatment led to increased improvement [Hsu]. Another study showed that MDD patients were better able to express their emotional states while listening to sad music than while listening to no music or to happy, angry, or scary music. The authors found that this therapy helped patients overcome verbal barriers to expressing emotion, which can assist therapists in successfully guiding treatment.

Other studies have provided insight into the physiological interactions between music therapy and depression. Music has been shown to decrease significantly the levels of the stress hormone cortisol, leading to improved affect, mood and cognitive functioning. A study also found that music led to a shift in frontal lobe activity (as measured by EEG) in depressed adolescents. Music was shown to shift activity from the right frontal lobe to the left, a phenomenon associated with positive affect and mood.

Depression is a very common disorder associated with reduced social functioning, impaired quality of life, and increased mortality. To compare the effects of music therapy for people with depression against other psychological or pharmacological therapies various studies have been done.But very few randomised controlled trials comparing music therapy with standard care or other interventions for depression are available. Only five such studies met the inclusion criteria of a review. Four of the five studies individually reported greater reduction in symptoms of depression among those randomised to music therapy than to those in standard care conditions. The fifth study, in which music therapy was used as an active control treatment, reported no significant change in mental state for music therapy compared with standard care.

It has been concluded that findings from individual randomised trials suggest that music therapy was accepted by people with depression and was associated with improvements in mood. However,it was not possible to be confident about its effectiveness due to the small number and low methodological quality of studies. High quality trials evaluating the effects of music therapy on depression are required.