Investigating the Effect of Music Therapy on Reducing Anxiety and Increasing Happiness in Patients with Lupus

Abstract

Lupus is a disease with an unknown cause in which tissues and immune cells are damaged. Heart is one of the organs involved in this disease. It is an important and potential risk that endangers the patient's health and can cause physical reactions such as changes in the body's physiological functions such as hypertension and increased pulse rate, as well as psychological reactions such as anxiety. The aim of present study was to investigate the effectiveness of music therapy on reducing the anxiety and increasing happiness among Lupus patients in 2018. The present study is an experimental study with a pre-test-post-test design conducted on 30 lupus patients in Hafez hospital in 2018. The patients were selected randomly and purposefully and were equally assigned into experimental group (n=15) and control group (n=15). Both group participants completed Beck Anxiety Inventory and Oxford Happiness Inventory. Then, experimental group received the music therapy intervention (30 minutes of relaxation exercises and 60 minutes of music). After 16 sessions (twice each week), post-test was administrated on experimental and control groups. Data were analyzed at two levels of descriptive and inferential statistics using SPSS. The result of covariance analysis showed that the music therapy significantly reduced anxiety and increased happiness in patients. Therefore, music therapy is a suitable method to reduce anxiety and increase happiness.