Clinical Psychology Achievements

The effectiveness of virtual reality music therapy on negative symptoms of patients with chronic schizophrenia

https://doi.org/10.22055/jacp.2025.48604.1434
Volume 11, Issue 2
Spring 2025
Pages 1-12
Clinical Psychology Achievements

Document Type : Original Article

Authors

Faeezeh Khodeirad 1
Akbar Atadokht 2

1 Master of General Psychology, Mohaghegh Ardabili University, Ardabil, Iran.

2 Professor, Department of Psychology, School of Educational Sciences and Psychology, University of Mohaghegh Ardabili, Ardabil, Iran.

Abstract
Schizophrenia is a chronic mental disorder whose negative symptoms play a very significant role in the prognosis of this disorder. This study was carried out with the aim of investigating the effectiveness of virtual reality-based music therapy (MT) on negative symptoms of chronic schizophrenia patient. The research performed is a trial-and-error experiment using pretest-posttest control group design. The statistical population of this study was patients with chronic schizophrenia in Ardabil province patients were purposefully selected from one of the centers and were randomly assigned to two intervention and control groups. To collect data factor analysis of positive and negative syndrome scale in Schizophrenia and Brief Psychiatric Rating Scale (BPRS) was used and the data were analyzed using multivariate covariance analysis in spss software version 26. The results showed that the intervention had a statistically significant difference between the two group in the range of negative symptoms with F=3.975 at the significance level p<0.05. The size of the intervention effect measured are in the order of 0.124 for reducing negative symptoms. As the findings of the research suggest it can be concluded that music therapy based on virtual reality in Schizophrenia patient causes relative improvement and reduction in negative symptoms of these patient. Thus, implementing this method can prevent the continuation of symptoms.

Keywords

negative symptoms
Schizophrenia
Music therapy
virtual reality
Subjects
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