Listening to music can reduce chronic pain and depression by up to 25 percent

According to a paper published in the latest UK-based Journal of Advanced Nursing, listening to music can reduce chronic pain by up to 21% and depression by up to 25 percent.

As well, it appears music can also make people feel more in control of their pain and less disabled by their condition.

Researchers conducted a controlled clinical trial with sixty people, dividing them into two music groups and a control group.

They found that people who listened to music for an hour a day for a week reported improved physical and psychological symptoms compared to the control group.

The participants in the study had an average age of 50 and were recruited from pain and chiropractic clinics in Ohio. They had been suffering from a range of painful conditions, including disc problems, rheumatoid arthritis and osteoarthritis, on average for 6 ½ years.

Ninety percent of the subjects said their pain affected more than one part of their body and 95% reported it was continuous. Prior to the music study, participants reported their usual pain averaged just below six on a 0-10 pain scale and their worst pain exceeded nine.

Nurse researcher Dr. Sandra L. Siedlecki of the Cleveland Clinic Foundation explained, “The people who took part in the music groups listened to music on a headset for an hour a day and everyone who took part, including the control group, kept a pain diary. Fory people were assigned to the two music groups and the other 20 formed the control group.”

She went on to say, “The first group were invited to choose their own favorite music and this included everything from pop and rock to slow and melodious tunes and nature sounds traditionally used to promote sleep or relaxation.”

“The second group chose from five relaxing tapes selected by us. These featured piano, jazz, orchestra, harp and synthesizer and had been used in previous pain studies by co-author Professor Marion Good from the Frances Payne Bolton School of Nursing at Case Western Reserve University, Ohio.”

At the end of the study, the music groups reported that their pain had dropped by between 12 and 21%, when measured by two different pain measurement scales. The control group reported pain increases of between 1 and 2 percent.

People in the music groups reported 19 to 25% less depression than the control group. The music groups reported feeling 9 to 18% less disabled than those who hadn’t listened to music and said they had between 5 and 8% more power over their pain than the control group.

Siedlecki says, “Our results show that listening to music had a statistically significant effect on the two experimental groups, reducing pain, depression and disability and increasing feelings of power. There were some small differences between the two music groups, but they both showed consistent improvements in each category when compared to the control group.”

“Non-malignant pain remains a major health problem and sufferers continue to report high levels of unrelieved pain despite using medication. So anything that can provide relief is to be welcomed.”

Study co-author Professor Marion Good adds, “Listening to music has already been shown to promote a number of positive benefits and this research adds to the growing body of evidence that it has an important role to play in modern healthcare.”

Previous research by Professor Good and Hui-Ling Lai, published last year in the Journal of Advanced Nursing and republished in the journal’s 30th Anniversary issue in 2006, showed that 45 minutes of listening to music before bed can improve sleep by more than a third.

© Copyright 2007 Insight Journal Online Magazine.

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