The incidence of depression among college students is increasing year by year, which has a serious impact on social development. As a non-drug intervention, music therapy can affect individual psychological state through emotional catharsis, emotion regulation and other ways, which has attracted more and more attention in recent years, and is expected to provide an effective auxiliary means for the management of depression in college students.

A total of 200 college students were randomly divided into the control group and the experimental group. The students in the control group maintained their usual learning lifestyle. The experimental group received 30 minutes of music therapy four times a week for a total of 8 weeks. Beck Depression Checklist was used to evaluate the degree of depression symptoms, and SPSS statistical software was used to analyze the data.

The results showed that the mean score of depressive symptoms in the experimental group decreased from 28.4±5.2 before the intervention to 15.2±3.8 after the intervention, while the score of the control group decreased by less than 1 (P< 0.001). The BDI score of the music therapy group was significantly lower than that of the control group (P< 0.05), and the difference was statistically significant.

The results show that music therapy has a significant therapeutic effect on depression intervention of college students, which can effectively reduce the symptoms of depression and improve the emotional state of college students.