Cited by 444Music Therapy and HealthArt Therapy and Mental HealthNeuroscience and Music Perception

Music therapy for stress reduction: a systematic review and meta-analysis

Open access
de Witte, Martina, Pinho, Ana da Silva, Stams, Geert-Jan, Moonen, Xavier, Bos, Arjan E.R., van Hooren, Susan·2022·Health Psychology Review

Abstract

Music therapy is increasingly being used as an intervention for stress reduction in both medical and mental healthcare settings. Music therapy is characterized by personally tailored music interventions initiated by a trained and qualified music therapist, which distinguishes music therapy from other music interventions, such as ‘music medicine’, which concerns mainly music listening interventions offered by healthcare professionals. To summarize the growing body of empirical research on music therapy, a multilevel meta-analysis, containing 47 studies, 76 effect sizes and 2.747 participants, was performed to assess the strength of the effects of music therapy on both physiological and psychological stress-related outcomes, and to test potential moderators of the intervention effects. Results showed that music therapy showed an overall medium-to-large effect on stress-related outcomes (d = .723, [.51–.94]). Larger effects were found for clinical controlled trials (CCT) compared to randomized controlled trials (RCT), waiting list controls instead of care as usual (CAU) or other stress-reducing interventions, and for studies conducted in Non-Western countries compared to Western countries. Implications for both music therapy and future research are discussed.

The claims and statistics of this paper haven’t been checked yet.

Run the check — free, no account needed. It reads the open-access text and checks the sources it cites.

A few free checks a day · papers already verified open instantly · results are public

Integrity signals

Registry

Crossref · 10.1080/17437199.2020.1846580

Cites

206 of 211 references verified0 citation errors · 0 not checkable

Statistics

Claims the paper makes

The claims and statistics of this paper haven’t been checked yet.

Run the check — free, no account needed. It reads the open-access text and checks the sources it cites.

A few free checks a day · papers already verified open instantly · results are public

Claims other papers make about this one

Each is checked against this paper’s own text: does it say what the citing paper says it does?

  • CBT-I reduces pre-sleep arousal and improves sleep continuity in trauma-exposed populations by integrating conventional behavioral sleep strategies with trauma-informed adaptations.

    “CBT-I has demonstrated efficacy in traumaexposed populations, reducing pre-sleep arousal and improving sleep continuity by integrating conventional behavioral sleep strategies with trauma-informed adaptations in multiple RCTs [115,116], especially when combined with trauma-focused interventions, such as trauma-focused cognitive behavioral therapy (TF-CBT) and eye movement desensitization and repro”

    From Pre-Sleep Anxiety: Mechanisms and Therapeutic Approaches in Clinical Practice. (2026) · cites this paper as [115]

    The Music therapy and Coding and moderators sections address music-based interventions and stress-related outcomes, not CBT-I. Searches for pre-sleep arousal, sleep continuity, trauma-informed adaptations, and CBT-I in trauma-exposed populations found no passage addressing the claim. Page numbers were not provided in our copy. (LLM, conf=0.76)

    Experimental — accuracy not yet measured

Self-check

Percentages, sums and reported differences re-computed from the paper’s own numbers.

The self-check needs the paper’s full text.

Cites

Flagged first, then by citations

Research works printed but not linked: 7

  1. Aldwin, C. M. (2007). Stress, coping, and development, second edition: An integrative perspective. Guilford Press.
  2. American Music Therapy Association. (2018). Definition and quotes about music therapy. What is music therapy? https:// www.musictherapy.org/about/quotes/ American Psychological Association. (2017). Stress in America: Coping with Change. https://www.apa.org/news/press/ releases/stress/2016/coping-with-change.pdf
  3. Gabrielsson, A., & Lindström, E. (2010). The role of structure in the musical expression of emotions. In P. N. Juslin, & J. A. Sloboda (Eds.), Series in affective science. Handbook of music and emotion: Theory, research, applications (pp. 367-400). Oxford University Press.
  4. S61340 · DOI
  5. aax0868 · DOI
  6. Bradt, J., Potvin, N., Kesslick, A., Shim, M., Radl, D., Schriver, E., … Komarnicky-Kocher, L. T. (2015). The impact of music therapy versus music medicine on psychological outcomes and pain in cancer patients: A mixed methods study. Supportive Care in Cancer, 23(5), 1261-1271. https://doi.org/10.1007/s00520-014-2478-7 · DOI
  7. Cassileth, B. R., Vickers, A. J., & Magill, L. A. (2003b). Music therapy for Mood Disturbance during Hospitalization for Autologous Stem Cell Transplantation: A randomized controlled trial. Cancer, 98(12), 2723-2729. https://doi.org/ 10.1002/cncr.11842 · DOI

Cited by

Sorted by citations

Authors
de Witte, M., Pinho, A. D. S., Stams, G.-J., Moonen, X., Bos, A. E. R., & van Hooren, S.
Affiliations
  • University of Amsterdam
  • University of Amsterdam (NL)
  • Zuyd University of Applied Sciences (NL)
  • The Open University (GB)
  • KenVaK, Research Centre for the Arts Therapies
Venue
Health Psychology Review
Published
2020-11-27
Volume
16
Issue
1
Pages
134-159
ISSN
  • 1743-7199 (ISSN-L)
  • 1743-7202
OpenAlex
W3105716709
Cited by
444
References
204
Citations by year
2026: 117 · 2025: 131 · 2024: 81 · 2023: 59 · 2022: 35 · 2021: 20 · 2020: 1
FWCI
4.64
Type
journal article
Language
en
Open access
Locations
  • Health Psychology Review (publishedVersion, cc-by-nc-nd)
  • PubMed (publishedVersion)
  • UvA-DARE (University of Amsterdam) (submittedVersion, cc-by-nc-nd)
  • DSpace (Open University in the Netherlands) (submittedVersion, cc-by-nc-nd)
  • DSpace (Open University in the Netherlands) (submittedVersion, other-oa)
  • Data Archiving and Networked Services (DANS) (submittedVersion, other-oa)
Funders
Nederlandse Organisatie voor Wetenschappelijk Onderzoek (grant number 023.007.068)
Topics
  • Social Sciences › Psychology › Social Psychology › Music Therapy and Health
  • Social Sciences › Arts and Humanities › Conservation › Art Therapy and Mental Health
  • Life Sciences › Neuroscience › Cognitive Neuroscience › Neuroscience and Music Perception
Keywords
music therapy, stress reduction, physiological stress, psychological stress, intervention moderators, music medicine, music listening intervention, healthcare settings
MeSH terms
Anxiety, Humans, Music, Music Therapy, Stress, Psychological

About these checks

Registry, retraction, Cites and statistics results are computed, not judged, with one exception: a printed reference that no index lists is read once by a model before it counts as a citation error. Claims are extracted by a model and kept only when their quote appears verbatim in the text; each cited source is then checked, with a model’s help, for whether it says what the claim relies on. Those verdicts can be wrong — read the claim’s quote and the cited source before relying on one.

Statistics and arithmetic are recomputed, not judged.

Confidence bands are shown only for fields calibrated on our annotated test set. None is calibrated yet, so no band is shown.

What counts as a claim ›How we measure confidence ›How we check this ›

Are you an author, or do you see a problem with this page? Request a review