Music therapy beneficial for depression

Music therapy, when added to TAU (eg, psychotherapy in combination with medication, collaborative care, occupational therapy), helped people affected by depressive disorders, such as major depression, by improving symptoms related to the condition (moderate-quality evidence) and its most frequent comorbidities, such as anxiety (low quality). Additionally, social, occupational and psychological functioning might improve among individuals who are involved in music therapy in addition to TAU (low quality). Music therapy was not associated with more or fewer adverse events than TAU (low quality). There were no differences in improving depressive symptoms between a music therapy intervention and a psychological therapy or medication only. There were also no differences between active and receptive music therapy approaches (very low-quality evidence).