Efficacy of music therapy on anxiety and diarrhea among patients with irritable bowel syndrome

Irritable bowel syndrome (IBS) is one of the most prevalent disease worldwide and it is considered as a stress- related disorder. Currently, music therapy is used for many somatic and psychological disorders. In this study, we evaluated efficacy of music therapy on anxiety and diarrhea among patients with IBS.
In this quasi experimental study, 80 female IBS patients with age of 30-45 years were randomly assigned into two groups of intervention (n=40) and control (n=40). Two groups continued drugs prescribed by physician. Intervention group received music therapy in groups of 8-10 people. Immediately before and at the end of study, all patients fulfilled Beck anxiety inventory and were asked for frequency of diarrhea. Data were analysed by ANCOVA using SPSS-ver20 software. P Mean (± standard deviation) of anxiety score in intervention and control groups was 22.32±4.96 and 23.4±5.94 before study, which reached to 16.32±6.97 and 21.6±6.6 at the end of study respectively (p This study showed that music therapy is a useful technique on decreasing anxiety and diarrhea in IBS patients and improves quality of life of these patients.