Abstract
Emotional lability is a common problem in adult patients with ADHD and is usually treated with methylphenidate. It is generally known that music can be used to improve mood in healthy adults. Therefore, this study was conducted to test the suitability of music as a possible non-pharmacological measure to improve mood. Forty patients with ADHD and 44 healthy control subjects were randomly assigned to one of two experimental conditions. The first group (music group) listened to Mozart’s music (KV 448) for 10 min while the second group remained in a silent room for 10 min (silence group). Subjective arousal and mood were assessed using self-report questionnaires before and after each condition. We showed that music listening led to a decrease in negative mood (sadness and hopelessness) in the ADHD group as well as in healthy controls. This effect was not evident in both silence groups.
Highlights
Attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) is a neurodevelopmental disorder that manifests during childhood
There were no significant differences in all other subscales of the Current Mood Scale (ASTS), such as fatigue, as well as in subjective measures of arousal (GMAS), all p > 0.05
In healthy controls listening to music decreased subjectively perceived fatigue with UFatigue = −3.13, p = 0.002 (MT0 = 11.71; SD = 5.31 and MT1 = 9.42; SD = 5.53; d = 0.41), and decreased negative mood with UNeg.Mood = −3.09, p = 0.002 (MT0 = 41.79; SD = 13.39 and MT1 = 37.17; SD = 11.47; d = 0.35)
Summary
Attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) is a neurodevelopmental disorder that manifests during childhood. Even though ADHD is a childhood disorder approximately 60% of the cases show persistence of symptoms into adulthood (Sibley et al, 2016). ADHD is characterized by inattention, hyperactivity and impulsivity. High levels of impulsivity are commonly associated with emotional lability (Gamli and Tahiroglu, 2018). According to OST symptoms of ADHD are mainly due to cortical hypoarousal. Altering patients’ arousal levels, methylphenidate provides an effective treatment for ADHD core symptoms such as inattention, hyperactivity and impulsivity. It is known that methylphenidate is a viable treatment option for emotional lability in children with ADHD (Kutlu et al, 2017) and adolescents aged 12–18 years (Gamli and Tahiroglu, 2018). A suitable non-pharmacological way to alter arousal levels is listening to music (Hirokawa, 2004; Carpentier and Potter, 2007; Schäfer et al, 2013)
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