OBJECTIVETo evaluate the effect of assisted music therapy for chronic schizophrenia.

METHODS11 articles including 603 chronic schizophrenia patients were meta-analyzed using fixed effect model or random effect model.

RESULTS6 randomized controlled trials were synthesized, showing that the difference was significant in statistics between experimental group (patients with music and drugs therapy) and control group (patients with drugs therapy only). Both the scores of SANS and BPRS for the control group were higher than those for the experimental group (SANS, d = 0.68; 95%CI: 0.46-0.90 and BPRS, d = 0.44; 95%CI: 0.06-0.82). In addition, the scores of both SANS and BPRS for the pre-test were higher than those for the post-test (SANS, d = 1.17; 95%CI: 0.02-2.32 and BPRS, d = 2.05; 95%CI: 0.28-3.82).

CONCLUSIONThe short-term effect of assisted music therapy is positive for chronic schizophrenia, but the long-term effect is still to be further studied.