Music therapy for chronic headaches. Evaluation of music therapeutic groups for patients suffering from chronic headaches

Problem. This paper presents a new approach to music therapeutic treatments . We developed a short time treatment (8 group sessions) for patients suffe ring from chronic headaches. The multimodal concept of this headache treatm ent and particularly the effect of a sound trance on headache patients are explained and evaluated in this paper. Methods. An evaluation study was done with 34 patients, who belonged to fou r therapy groups. in order to evaluate this treatment the patients were int erviewed and had to fill out several self-rating scales about pain and some psychological variables (e. g. depression) before, directly after and 6-12 months after the treatment. This treatment group (n=26) was compared to a small waiting group (n=9). A case study elucidated the psyche-social anamne sis, and the process and outcome of the music therapy. Results. The case study shows that the sound trance caused a loss of the af fect control or at least reduced it. This experience enabled the patients t o develop creative solutions, which resulted in a pain relief 6-12 month la ter. The comparison of the statistic means directly before and after the tr eatment did not reveal many therapeutic effects. Yet, 6-12 months later man y patients reported less days at which they suffered from headaches;and the y also significantly improved their ability of pain control. Conclusion. The results indicate that music therapy groups are more success ful than a waiting group. The study's results agree with numerous other psy chological evaluation studies and shows once more that music therapists wor king with patients suffering from chronic headaches are able to achieve suc cessful results particularly long-dated. Thus,creative therapeutic approach es supplement the medical treatment, as they help the patients to develop a n adaptive way of coping their pain. Yet, it will need further research to confirm the benefit of music therapy for patients suffering from chronic pa in.