O R I G I N A L A R T I C LE

Effects of music on depression in older people: a randomised controlled

trial
Moon Fai Chan, Zi Yang Wong, Hideaki Onishi and Naidu Vellasamy Thayala

Aim. To determine the effect of music on depression levels in older adults.

Background. Depression is a common psychiatric disorder in older adults, and its impacts on this group of people, along with its
conventional treatment, merit our attention. Conventional pharmacological methods might result in dependence and impairment in psychomotor and cognitive functioning. Listening to music, which is a non-pharmacological method, might reduce
depression.
Design. A randomised controlled study.
Method. The study was conducted from July 2009June 2010 at participants home in Singapore. In total, 50 older adults (24
using music and 26 control) completed the study after being recruited. Participants listened to their choice of music for
30 minutes per week for eight weeks.
Outcome measures. Depression scores were collected once a week for eight weeks.
Results. Depression levels reduced weekly in the music group, indicating a cumulative dose effect, and a statistically significant
reduction in depression levels was found over time in the music group compared with non-music group.
Conclusions. Listening to music can help older people to reduce their depression level.
Relevance to clinical practice. Music is a non-invasive, simple and inexpensive therapeutic method of improving life quality in
community-dwelling older people.
Key words: depression, music intervention, older adults
Accepted for publication: 15 April 2011

Depression is a common psychiatric disorder with symptoms

including low mood, low energy, poor concentration, loss of
pleasure, poor self-care and low self-esteem (Moussavi et al.
2007, Maratos et al. 2008, WHO 2009). In Singapore, a
survey reported that approximately 75% of the senior citizen
retired after the age of 55 (Economic Characteristics 2005,
http://www.singstat.gov.sg/pubn/popn/ghsr1/chap3.pdf), and

another health survey in Singapore reported that the prevalence rate on depression of senior citizen is about 41%
(Ministry of Community Development 2005). The pharmacological treatment of depression in old age is often associated
with adverse reactions and drug interactions because of polypharmacy and age-related physiological changes (Spina &
Scordo 2002). Therefore, safer alternatives to the treatment of
depression in the older adults must be sought. In response to
the challenge posed by pharmacological treatment in old age,

Authors: Moon Fai Chan, PhD, CStat, Assistant Professor, Alice Lee
Centre for Nursing Studies, Yong Loo Lin School of Medicine; Zi
Yang Wong, BSc, RN, Former Student, Alice Lee Centre for
Nursing Studies, Yong Loo Lin School of Medicine; Hideaki
Onishi, PhD, Assistant Professor, Yong Siew Toh Conservatory of
Music, National University of Singapore; Naidu Vellasamy Thayala,
MSc, RN, Lecturer, Alice Lee Centre for Nursing Studies, Yong Loo

Lin School of Medicine, National University of Singapore,

Singapore City, Singapore
Correspondence: MF Chan, Assistant Professor, Alice Lee Centre
for Nursing Studies, National University of Singapore, Level 2,
MD11, CRC, Singapore 117597, Singapore. Telephone:
+65 6516 8684.
E-mail: [email protected]

Introduction

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2011 Blackwell Publishing Ltd

Journal of Clinical Nursing, 21, 776783, doi: 10.1111/j.1365-2702.2011.03954.x

Original article

music intervention has been identified by the researcher as an

area of interest. The use of music as a healing intervention is
common throughout history (Aldridge 1994). It has been used
in specialised domains such as psychiatry, neurology and
coronary care, as well as surgery and general geriatric care
(Flaugher 2002, Rose 2004, Sung et al. 2006, Sarkamo et al.
2008, Moradipanah et al. 2009). More specifically, studies
have been conducted and have shown that music listening
reduces depressive symptoms in the older age group (Lai &
Good 2005, Choi et al. 2008, Sarkamo et al. 2008, Chan et al.
2009, Cooke et al. 2009). However, studies of the effects of
music on community-dwelling older adults were generally not
explored (Chan et al. 2009). This study aims to investigate
music listening as a form of intervention to alleviate symptoms
of depression in the community-dwelling older adult group in
Singapore.
One theory that attempts to explain how music might
affect human psychological response is the theory of Music,
Mood and Movement (MMM). It proposes that music
produces the psychological response of altered mood leading
to improved health outcomes (Murrock & Higgins 2009
p. 2252). Elements of music such as the melody, pitch and
harmony are shown to elicit a wide range of emotional
responses in the listener (Murrock & Higgins 2009). As the
elements pass through the auditory cortex of the brain,
processing of the music occurs in the limbic system of the
brain to elicit emotions (Tramo 2001). According to Jourdain
(1997), music calls on memory of the past experiences that
have emotions etched to them; this changes the emotional
state of the listener. This indicates that if the right music is
played, music listening has the potential to alter the
emotional state of the listener, hence achieving a therapeutic
outcome such as reduced symptoms of depression (Guzzetta
1991).
Although several empirical studies have provided support
for this view on the effects of music on depression level for
older people (Chan et al. 2009, Guetin et al. 2009, Moradipanah et al. 2009), there are also conflicting findings across
the individual studies. For example, two studies have shown
that there is no significant effect of music on reducing
depression (Elliott 1994, Deshmukh et al. 2009). One of the
explanations suggested by Elliott (1994) is that there may be
not enough time or number of interventions for cumulative
effects to occur. In a systematic review investigating the dose
response relationship in music therapy, it is noted that small
effects are seen after 310 sessions; medium effects are
achieved after 11 sessions and large effects after 16 sessions
(Gold et al. 2009). This provides support for the view that
the effect of music increases as the number of exposure to
music increases. Currently, there is no study that has been
2011 Blackwell Publishing Ltd
Journal of Clinical Nursing, 21, 776783

Older adults listening to music

carried out to investigate the effects of music listening on the

older adult population in Singapore. In addition, to explore
the cumulative effects of music on older people, an eightweek randomised controlled trail was conducted.
The aim of the study was to examine the effect of music on
depression levels in community-dwelling older people in
Singapore. The following two alternative hypotheses were
tested:
1 There is a statistically significant lower depression levels on
the older adults in the music group than those in a nonmusic group.
2 There is a statistically significant reduction in depression
levels during the eight weeks study for the older adults in
each group.

Methods
Sample size, study design and participants
This study was a randomised, controlled, repeated measures
study (Fig. 1) conducted in subjects home. A research nurse
visited each subject weekly for eight weeks to measure their
depression scores, and data were collected between July
2009June 2010.
The power of this study was estimated based on the
depression scores. A one-tailed repeated measure analysis of
covariance (RM ANCOVA ) was used to test for differences on
between, within and interaction effects, and a medium effect
size (061 for between effects, 072 for within effects and 060
for interaction effects) was chosen based on the findings from
previous study (Chan et al. 2009). The required sample for
each group was 28 (total = 56); this number could achieve
80% power at a 5% level of significance.
All subjects were aged 55 or more, who were alert and
oriented, not hospitalised at the point of recruitment, able to
hear, communicate verbally and give written consent. The
subjects were recruited via the team members social network
using convenience sampling method. The music intervention
took place in the participants own home.
Sixty-one subjects were approached and 56 were eligible,
four refused to participate, as they refused to allow the search
nurse into their homes. The remaining 52 subjects were
assigned randomly to either the music or non-music group.
Each participant was given a number from 152, and we
selected 26 unique numbers from the random digits table
ranging from 152. Participants with numbers matched with
the generated number were allocated to the music group, and
those not matched were allocated to the control group. After
the allocation, two participants in the music group refused to
continue, because they did not like all the music that was

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MF Chan et al.

Assessed for eligibility

sample (n = 61)
Excluded (n = 9):
Not meeting inclusion criteria (n = 5)
[3 hearing problem; 2 inability to
read/write];
Refused to participate (n = 4)

Randomisation (n = 52)

At week 1:

At week 1:

Allocated to music intervention (n = 26)

Allocated to non-music (n = 26)

Received allocated music intervention (n = 24)

Received allocated non-music (n = 26)

Did not receive allocated music intervention (n = 2)

Did not receive allocated non-music (n = 0)

Baseline demographic and depression data were

collected

Baseline demographic and depression data were

collected

At week 2:

At week 2:

Lost to follow up (n = 0); Discontinued (n = 0)

Lost of follow up (n = 0); Discontinued (n = 0)

Depression data were collected

Depression data were collected

From week 3 to week 7:

From week 3 to week 7:

Lost to follow up (n = 0); Discontinued (n = 0)

Lost to follow up (n = 0); Discontinued (n = 0)

Depression data were collected once a week

Depression data were collected once a week

At week 8:

At week 8:

Lost to follow up (n = 0); Discontinued (n = 0)

Lost to follow up (n = 0); Discontinued (n = 0)

Depression data were collected

Depression data were collected

Analyzed (n = 24)

Analyzed (n = 26)

Excluded from analysis (n = 0)

Excluded from analysis (n = 0)

Figure 1 Subjects progress through the trial: CONSORT flowchart.

provided. In all, there were 24 participants in the music group

and 26 participants in the non-music group at the start of the
study. In the end, none of the remaining participants
withdrew from the study with zero drop-out rate (Fig. 1).

Measures
The study instrument was bilingual with Mandarin and
English consisted of two parts:
Part 1: Demographic and health variables. This included age,
gender, religion, marital status, educational level, previous
experience of listening to music and medical history. These

778

data were commonly employed in previous studies using

music as an intervention (Chan et al. 2009, Moradipanah
et al. 2009).
Part 2: Depression variable. The Geriatric Depression Scale
(GDS-15) was used to collect subjects depression scores
(Yesavage & Brink 1983, Spreen & Strauss 1998). It is a
valid and reliable tool with cronbachs alpha values ranging
from 088091. It is one of the most popular tools used in
clinical settings and is intended to assess depression in older
people. It comprises 15 closed-ended questions and focuses
on asking how the participants felt during the previous week.
One point is assigned to each question, and a summary of all
2011 Blackwell Publishing Ltd
Journal of Clinical Nursing, 21, 776783

Original article

questions yields a total score from 015. Scores below three

are considered normal, those between 47 as mild and those
8 or above are suggestive of depression (Lee et al. 1993, Chiu
et al. 1994).

Types of music
The research nurse first introduced the four different selections of music, namely Chinese, Malay, Indian and Western
slow rhythmic music. The participant then chose one type of
music to be played during that session. Recent studies have
shown that giving participants a choice of music lowered
anxiety, promoted relaxation and led to effective treatment
(Hsu & Lai 2004, Lee et al. 2005, Chang et al. 2008, Chan
et al. 2009). Each session lasted for 30 minutes before data
were taken. The four different types of music were carefully
selected by the research team to have characteristic of
6080 beats/minute without accented beats, percussive characteristics or syncopation. These characteristics were chosen
based on several studies (Yung et al. 2002, Lai & Good
2005, Lee et al. 2005, Chan et al. 2009).

Data collection procedure

After random allocation of participants to groups, baseline
data were collected by the research nurse. Prior to the musiclistening session, the research nurse introduced the four types
of music to the participants by reading the titles of the music
and playing a one-minute sample tape from each selection for
them to listen, before they decide which music to be played
for that session. After deciding on their selection of music, the
participant was asked to lie on bed or sofa for five minutes
before the music intervention. Part 1 of the instrument was
administered in the first week during baseline data collection
for all subjects. For experimental group, Part 2 was administered as baseline after five minutes of rest period and before
the 30 minutes of music intervention in week 1. Subsequently, for week 2 to week 8, it was administered after
the 30-minute music intervention. For the non-music group,
the instrument was administered weekly from week 18 after
a 30-minute rest period (Chan et al. 2009).
During the study, a CD or MP3 player containing all the
music was provided to the subjects in the music group to
listen to at home. Participants in the music group were
provided with earphones or speakers for listening to the
music. They were able to adjust the volume to their
preference. When the music started, the research nurse left
the participant alone and stayed a short distance away, so
that he or she would be available for any unexpected
response to the music. After 30 minutes, the research nurse
2011 Blackwell Publishing Ltd
Journal of Clinical Nursing, 21, 776783

Older adults listening to music

stopped the music and immediately measured the participants depression data. Participants in the non-music group
were given an uninterrupted rest period of 30 minutes, and
their depression scores were collected after the rest period.
All data collection was carried out by the same research
nurse, and the protocol was as follows:
1 Use of the MP3/CD player was demonstrated, and the
participant was given an opportunity to return-demonstrate use of the MP3/CD to ensure its correct use.
2 Both non-music and music intervention were carried out in
a quiet and restful environment without interruptions with
comfortable bed/sofa/chair.
3 For participants in the music intervention group, they were
asked to relax their body and mind before starting the
music-listening intervention. For participants in the nonmusic group, they were asked to relax their body and mind
30 minutes before starting the interview.
4 The research nurse then left the participant alone and went
a short distance away, close enough to be available in case
of any unexpected response.
5 For participants in the music intervention, after the
30-minute music intervention, the research nurse stopped
the music and collected participants data immediately. For
participants in the non-music, after the 30-minute rest
period, the research nurse collected participants data
immediately.

Ethical considerations
Approval was obtained from the Institutional Review Board
(IRB) of the university. The research nurse explained the
study to potential participants and written informed consent
was obtained beforehand. The subjects personal information
was identified only by case number, so that confidentiality
was assured. Participants were told that they could withdraw
from the study at any time. In addition, if the subjects
experienced any untoward or unanticipated unpleasant
effects from music, then the music intervention will stop
immediately.

Data analysis
Descriptive statistics was used to describe the groups
characteristics. To test for homogeneity between groups for
the demographic and health history data, chi-square or the
Fishers exact test was employed. The ShapiroWilk test was
used to examine the normality of the GDS-15, and results
showed that it was normally distributed, and thus parametric
tests were used. ANCOVA was used to determine whether there
was any statistically significant difference in depression levels

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MF Chan et al.

between groups at each time point. Repeated measures (RM)

ANCOVA was used to examine the within, between and
interaction effects and adjusted by subjects demographic
data. If the assumption of sphericity was violated, the
GreenhouseGeisser correction was used, and the significance
level of p < 005 was adopted.

Results
Demographic and health history
A total of 50 participants took part in the study and
continued to the end of eight weeks. There were 26
participants in the non-music group and 24 participants
in the music group. Majority of the participants were
5564 years old (n = 32, 640%; Table 1). There were more
women (n = 32, 64%) than men in the study, and more than
half of the participants education level were secondary and
above (n = 27, 54%). While most of the participants had
religious beliefs, only 8% of the total sample did not have a
religion. The majority of the participants had their children as
a form of economical support (42%). Most of the participants (620%) did not have the habit of listening to music.
For the participants with some form of chronic illnesses
(Table 1), 759% (n = 22) had hypertension, 241% (n = 7)
suffered from diabetes, 241% (n = 7) suffered from other
diseases such as hyperlipidaemia and systemic lupus erythematosus, 103% (n = 3) suffered from cardiovascular diseases
and one participant has respiratory disease (n = 1). 31% of
participants (n = 9) have more than one chronic illnesses. No
significant differences were identified between groups for all
demographic characteristics and health history.

Depression level
To address hypothesis 1, using RM ANCOVA , adjusted by
baseline depression scores, gender, age, habit of music and
region belief, to test for between-group difference in the
depression score over eight weeks yielded significant difference (p = 0016; Table 2 and Fig. 2). In addition, ANCOVA ,
adjusted by baseline depression scores, gender, age, habit of
music and religion belief, was used to determine any
statistical significant difference in depression scores between
the two groups at each week. As shown in Table 2, no
significant differences were found between the two groups at
week 2 (p = 0639), week 3 (p = 0213) and week 5
(p = 0089), but significant differences were found between
groups at week 4 (p = 0005), week 6 (p = 0012), week 7
(p = 0008) and week 8 (p = 0006). To address hypothesis 2,
RM ANCOVA was used to test for within-times factor (eight

780

Table 1 Comparison between groups

Demographic
Age
5564
6574
75+
Gender
Male
Female
Marital status
Married
Single
Widow/Widower
Educational level
Primary School and below
Secondary School
College and above
Religious belief
No
Yes
Catholic and Christian
Buddhist and Taoist
Others
Economic status
Supported by children
Saving
Others
Perception of sleep quality
Good and very good
Fair
Bad and very bad
Habit of music listening
No
Yes
Chronic illnesses
No
Yes
Hypertension (Yes)
Diabetes mellitus (Yes)
Cardiovascular (Yes)

Total
(n = 50)
n (%)

Non-music
(n = 26)
n (%)

Music
(n = 24)
n (%)

32 (640)
12 (230)
6 (120)

16 (615)
6 (231)
4 (154)

16 (667)
6 (250)
2 (83)

18 (360)
32 (640)

9 (346)
17 (654)

9 (375)
15 (625)

43 (860)
1 (20)
6 (120)

23 (885)
1 (38)
2 (77)

20 (833)
0 (00)
4 (167)

23 (460)
23 (460)
4 (80)

13 (500)
10 (385)
3 (115)

10 (417)
13 (542)
1 (42)

4
46
14
31
1

1
25
7
17
1

3
21
7
14
0

(80)
(920)
(304)
(674)
(22)

(38)
(962)
(280)
(680)
(40)

(125)
(875)
(333)
(667)
(00)

21 (420)
11 (220)
18 (360)

12 (462)
6 (231)
8 (308)

9 (375)
5 (208)
10 (417)

25 (500)
17 (340)
8 (160)

10 (387)
12 (462)
4 (154)

15 (625)
5 (208)
4 (167)

31 (620)
19 (380)

17 (654)
9 (346)

14 (583)
10 (417)

21
29
22
7
3

10
16
12
4
3

11
13
10
3
0

(420)
(580)
(759)
(241)
(103)

(385)
(615)
(750)
(250)
(189)

(458)
(542)
(769)
(231)
(00)

weeks) for each group. In the non-music group, results

revealed that there was no significant reduction in the
depression scores (Trend analysis, F = 018, p = 0677) over
the eight weeks. On the other hand, there was significant
reduction in the depression scores over the eight week for the
music group (Trend analysis, F = 705, p = 0016).

Discussion
The findings contribute to knowledge about the effectiveness
of music used as an intervention to relieve depression for
older adults. From the results, there was a significant
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Older adults listening to music

Table 2 Comparison of GDS-15 by groups again at eight weeks

Depression

Non-music (n = 26)

Music (n = 24)

Mean (SD)

Mean (SD)

F (p-value)

417
363
296
188
192
146
146
138

110
022
160
857
302
696
765
851

GDS-15
Week 1
423
Week 2
396
Week 3
377
Week 4
431
Week 5
404
Week 6
415
Week 7
400
Week 8
415
Between-group 631
effect, F
(p-value)
Within-time 100
effect, F
(p-value)
401
Interaction
effect, F
(p-value)

(289)
(266)
(337)
(312)
(345)
(374)
(329)
(353)
(0016*)

(314)
(295)
(239)
(229)
(232)
(179)
(184)
(184)

(0427)
(0639)
(0213)
(0005**)
(0089)
(0012*)
(0008**)
(0006**)

(0418)

(0001**)

GDS-15, Geriatric Depression Scale.

Significant at *p < 005, **p < 001.

ANCOVA adjusted by age, gender, religious belief and habit.

ANCOVA at week 2 to week 8 adjusted by week 1 (baseline), age,
gender, habit, religious belief.

Repeated measures ANCOVA adjusted by week 1 (baseline), gender,

religious belief and habit.

Depression scores

5
4
3
2
Non-music

Music
0

Week
Figure 2 Comparison of depression between groups.

difference between the two groups at weeks 4, 6, 7 and 8. The

music group had consistently reduced depression scores
compared with the control group during the eight-week
study. In Murrock and Higgins (2009) study, they pointed
out that music would evoke a psychological response by
altering mood and leading to improved health outcomes. In
this study, the subjects experiencing lesser depression implied
that music stimuli had been processed in the mood. The fact
that perception of music leads to stirring emotional experiences is an indicator that the limbic system is engaged in
2011 Blackwell Publishing Ltd
Journal of Clinical Nursing, 21, 776783

processing music stimuli and that this system is influenced by

musical pitch and rhythm (Guzzetta 1991, Jourdain 1997,
Guetin et al. 2009). Thus, peoples emotional reaction to
music may occur because the limbic system is the neurophysiological location of emotional states, feelings and
sensations. Therefore, our findings support the MMM model
that music stimuli exert an emotionally meaningful effect on
human health by engaging specific brain functions.
The length of this study was extended to eight weeks
mainly because we wanted to address the accumulative effect
of music listening for older people on depression levels. The
results from this study pointed towards that music has a
doseresponse relationship in GDS when significant difference was found after week 6. A systematic review was
conducted by Gold et al. (2009) on the doseresponse of
music on psychiatric patients, and they suggested that there
was a significant doseeffect relationship in music therapy for
depression levels on psychiatric patients. From our result, the
time taken for depression scores in the music group to reach a
consistent statistically significant reduction level was six
weeks.

Strengths, limitations and future directions

This research had several methodological strengths. Drop-out
and lost on follow-up rates were zero, with 100% of the
subjects in both groups providing data during two months.
Despite this strength, the research also had limitations that
affected its outcome. First, the sample was depended on the
researchers social network via snowballing sampling technique. This could have created bias in the selection of the
sample, even though the sample was randomised after being
selected. Second, blinding of the participant to the intervention was not possible as the participants were aware that they
were listening to music, and Hawthorne effect could not be
avoided, even though the researcher remained a distance
away from the participants during the intervention. Third,
length between the interventions was one week apart, and
thus, confounding variables could have set in during the week
and cause a change in the outcome variables. For example,
this study did not control the number of times the participant
can listen to music at home other than the intervention
session. They were only encouraged to listen to music at
home after the intervention session, but it was not made
compulsory. Therefore, the participant may listen to more
music on a particular week, which may result in a significant
difference from the baseline. Fourth, although results shown
that listening to music may act as an effective intervention to
allay depression levels in a group of older people, because of
small sample sizes, we could consider it as a preliminary

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MF Chan et al.

study and further study should proceed by recruiting more

subjects. Last but not the least, to be aware of the emotional
side effects that may occur in some of the older people after
listening to music, having a psychologist work with the
research nurse to handle this issue is suggested for future
studies.

depression levels and develop a healing process in their daily

lives.

Acknowledgements
This study was funded by the Cross-Faculty Research Grant
of the National University of Singapore (CFG09P30).

Relevance to clinical practice

From this randomised controlled study, it is shown that
listening to music may act as an effective intervention to
reduce depression levels for a group of older adults.
Accumulative effects were confirmed on this two months
design; however, because of small sample sizes, we would
consider it as a pilot study. In practice, health-care
professionals can encourage older people to listen to music
as a self-care therapy that could enable them to reduce their

Contributions
Study design: MFC, HO, NVT; data collection and analysis:
ZYW, MFC and manuscript preparation: MFC, ZYW, HO,
NVT.

Conflict of interest
The author(s) declare that they have no conflict of interests.

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