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Music therapy for autism spectrum disorder: does it have a role?

Part of: BJPsych Advances Cochrane Corner and Round the Corner Collection

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  16 January 2025

Eleri Davies Open the ORCID record for Eleri Davies [Opens in a new window]  and
Rosemary King
Eleri Davies*
Affiliation:
A core psychiatry trainee with Avon and Wiltshire Mental Health Partnership NHS Trust, Bristol, UK.
Rosemary King
Affiliation:
A specialty registrar with Oxford Health NHS Foundation Trust's child and adolescent mental health services, Swindon, UK. They both have an interest in therapeutic options for young people with neurodevelopmental disorders.
*
Correspondence Eleri Davies. Email: [email protected]
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Summary

Music therapy attempts to facilitate communication and expression – core problems for autistic people – through the development of experiences and relationships mediated by music. This commentary assesses a Cochrane Review of the effects of music therapy, compared with placebo or standard care, for autistic people, and its conclusion that music therapy is probably associated with an increased chance of global improvement and perhaps a slight increase in quality of life and reduction in total autism symptom severity in the short to medium term. The review was not able to examine longer-term effects as the longest follow-up period was 12 months. The certainty of the evidence was graded from moderate to very low, and therefore the results need to be viewed with caution.

Keywords

Autism spectrum disordermusic therapychild and adolescent mental healthneurodevelopmental disordertherapeutic approaches
Type
Round the corner
Information
BJPsych Advances , Volume 31 , Issue 1 , January 2025 , pp. 3 - 7
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Copyright
Copyright © The Author(s), 2025. Published by Cambridge University Press on behalf of Royal College of Psychiatrists

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Footnotes

Commentary on… Music therapy for autistic people (Cochrane Corner). See this issue.

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