Clinicians who work with children may be interested in two recent systematic reviews that examined Randomized Control Trials with child populations.

First, Treurnicht Naylor et al. (2011) completed a systematic review of RCTs on music therapy with children. The authors’ definition of music therapy is “the systematic use of music or musical elements – along with the resulting interpersonal relationship with a trained music therapist – to achieve optimal health outcomes for a client” (p. 1).

Using the guidelines of the PRISMA statement, they searched for articles from 1984 – 2009 on pediatric music therapy and found 17 RCTs that met their criteria. Overall, the methodological quality of the studies was reported to be poor to moderate. Furthermore, the authors found that study interventions and objectives varied greatly, with studies employing passive listening, live music therapy intervention, or a combination of interventions.

The authors investigated different outcomes including cognitive skills, social skills, coping skills, and decrease of symptoms. Although there were positive indications in all of these areas, there were no definitive conclusions due to high variability in measures/procedures and the low quality of research.

The second study, completed by Mrazova et al. (2010), also looked at RCTs of music therapy with children. The authors present a  psychotherapeutic definition of music therapy; however, presented any RCTs found (regardless of clinical approach in the study).

The authors identified 28 studies dated from 1998 – 2009 and concluded that there was a lot of variability within the studies (i.e., not really able to compare studies). Also, 25 of the 28 studies were shown to have low numbers of patients. The music within the studies included music listening, active music making, or both.

The authors of this study appear to be physicians and scientists (no music therapist reported) and their conclusion focused on the need for more solid research and more basic research focused on therapeutic mechanism of music.

Interesting to the clinician-scientist is that we have two systematic reviews on the same topic, finding only 28 and 17 studies respectively. My quick (and un-scientific) tally of they articles found by both of these papers (taking out studies that both cited) is 39 total. Still not that many if we are looking at 25 years of research. Of that, most were reported to be low quality or to not be replicable. Bottom line – we need more research in this areas of treatment.

References:

Mrázová, M., & Celec, P. (2010). A systematic review of randomized controlled trials using music therapy for children. J Altern Complement Med. 16(10), 1089-95. PMID: 20932195

Treurnicht Naylor, K., Kingsnorth, S., Lamont, A., McKeever, P., & Macarthur, C. (2011). The effectiveness of music in pediatric healthcare: A systematic review of randomized controlled trials. Evid Based Complement Alternat Med.  PMID: 20976017