A Systematic Review of Research on the Efficacy of Musical Therapy for the Treatment of Psychopathology in Children and Adolescents

Abstract

The goals of this review were to (1) determine whether music therapy is effective for kids and teens with psychopathology and (2) determine whether and how factors such as pathology type, client age, music therapy approach, and outcome type affect the magnitude of the effect of music therapy. The methodology for the meta-analysis includes eleven studies with a total of one hundred eighty-eight participants. After combining the effect sizes and taking the sample size into account, the distribution of these effects was analysed. Findings: Music therapy had a statistically significant and homogenous medium to large positive effect (ES ¼.61) on clinically relevant outcomes after one outlying extremely positive value was excluded from the study. There was no indication of any bias in the publishing. The effects were more pronounced for emotional illnesses than behavioural and developmental disorders; for humanistic, eclectic, and psychodynamic methods, the effects were more pronounced than for behavioural models; and for social skills and self-concept, the effects were less pronounced than for behavioural and developmental outcomes. We conclude by talking about the implications for future studies and clinical practice. Music, psychotherapy, music therapy, developmental delay, behavioural issues, and meta-analysis.