Effects of a music therapy program upon awareness of mood in music, group cohesion, and self-esteem among hospitalized adolescent patients.

Subjects for this study were 13 hospitalized patients given the diagnosis of adjustment reaction to adolescence. The subjects were randomly divided into experimental and control groups. The experimental period consisted of 18 1-hour sessions. Subjects in the control group did not attend music therapy activities. Experimental subjects engaged in group discussions concerning moods and emotions in music, expression and identification of body language, story composition to recorded music, and drawing to music. Four types of pre and posttests were administered: agreement on mood or emotion expressed in music as measured by an adjective checklist; sociograms to measure group cohesion; the number of pronouns expressing group feelings ("we, our"); and scores of the Coopersmith Self-Esteem Inventory. Significant differences in favor of experimental subjects were found on the adjective checklist (p = .01) and the group versus personal pronouns (p less than .05). The group cohesion measure approached significance (p = .062).

RCT Entities:   Population Interventions Outcomes