Evaluating a Treatment Manual for Music Therapy in Adult Outpatient Oncology Care

摘要

Music therapy is a prevalent treatment for people with a life-threatening illness, with inpatient oncology care being one of the most common fields of application. A recently published review on this topic shows that studies examining the effects of active music therapy treatments in an outpatient setting are still rare. Based on the Phase Model of Psychotherapy Outcome, a treatment manual has been developed for outpatient music therapy cancer care, consisting of 20 individual sessions. The aim of this study was to evaluate the effectiveness of the procedures of this manual by comparing prescores and postscores of 20 patients’ self-reported general therapy outcome, quality of life, and subjective pain intensity ratings. Results show that the intervention led to a significant improvement on all 3 dependent measures. Effect sizes ranged from medium to large. The authors conclude that it is necessary to further expand outpatient cancer care in Germany and to integrate music therapy as an effective treatment into these areas.