Abstract
Poor sleep quality is frequent in patients undergoing cancer treatment such as chemotherapy and radiotherapy. In the present study, an effectiveness of music therapy on the quality of sleep in cancer patients was evaluated. 184 adult cancer patients undergoing chemotherapy or radiotherapy were selected from the population who met the inclusion criteria based on convenience sampling. They were randomly assigned to three groups: two intervention groups of active or receptive music therapy and a control group. Participants completed Pittsburgh Sleep Quality Index at pre-intervention and post-intervention stages. Ten sessions of active or receptive music therapy were applied to the intervention groups, while the control group received only routine medical care. Every session was of 20-30 minutes. Receptive music therapy involved patient’s preferred Persian pop music, and active music therapy involved playing guitar and singing under training and supervision of a music-therapist. Two-way Analysis of Covariance indicated significant differences between results of pre-test and post-test on sleep quality in both intervention groups. It showed the effectiveness of music therapy in experimental groups, as compared to the control group, and revealed active music therapy to be more effective to improve sleep quality. No gender difference was found on the results. The study has great implications for sleep quality improvement in the cancer patients undergoing chemotherapy and radiotherapy.
Highlights
Cancer diagnosis is a stressful event and can cause psychological collapse in patients
Sleep disturbance accrues in cancer patients who are under treatment, and is characterized by falling asleep with effort, staying asleep, deprived sleep efficacy and extreme day tiredness (Zarogoulidis et al 2013)
The only investigation found in this area was Lafçi and Öztunç’s (2015) research on effect of music therapy on sleep quality of breast cancer patients, that just applied receptive classical music therapy and the result showed that it was an effective intervention in reducing sleeping problems
Summary
Cancer diagnosis is a stressful event and can cause psychological collapse in patients. The only investigation found in this area was Lafçi and Öztunç’s (2015) research on effect of music therapy on sleep quality of breast cancer patients, that just applied receptive classical music therapy and the result showed that it was an effective intervention in reducing sleeping problems. The objective of the present study was to examine the efficacy of active and receptive music therapy sessions in improving sleep quality in cancer in patients undergoing chemotherapy or radiotherapy and comparing the measure of effectiveness in males and females.
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