Background & Objectives: One of the most pressing and recurring topics in treating addiction disorders is craving, temptation, or desire to consume drugs. Craving encompasses many phenomena, including the expectation of reinforcing effects and intense craving for substances. The quality of life is a person's perception of his or her situation, the level of enjoyment of that situation, and the level of his or her enjoyment of critical life situations, which is related to the goals and expectations of the individual. Music therapy is one of these creative and complementary therapies. According to the American Music Therapy Association, music therapy is the clinical and evidence–based use of music interventions to achieve unique goals during therapeutic communication using professional and reputable professionals who have completed a music therapy program. Drug addiction is a chronic disease usually associated with another psychiatric illness and reduces a person's quality of life. The purpose of the present study was to examine the effectiveness of music therapy on quality of life and craving in patients under methadone maintenance therapy.
Methods: This research method was quasi–experimental with a pretest and posttest design with a control group. The study's statistical population included all addicts under methadone maintenance treatment in addiction treatment clinics affiliated with the Tehran City Health Organization, Tehran City, Iran in 2019. A total of 36 addicts were selected from the available qualified volunteers by convenient sampling and were randomly divided into experimental and control groups (18 in each group). The inclusion criteria in the present study were as follows: addicts under methadone maintenance treatment, male gender, no physical problems, no history of exposure to psychological training, aged 18 to 40 years, and no history of drug use. The exclusion criteria were as follows: non–cooperation of the samples or their families in any of the research stages, having physical problems, history of psychiatric problems, professional athletes aged over 40 years, and drug use. The Quality of Life Questionnaire (Ware & Sherbourne, 1992) and the Desires for Drug Questionnaire (Franken et al., 2002) were used to collect data. Music therapy sessions were performed exclusively for the experimental group in eight 90–minute sessions, twice a week for two months, based on the educational package of Gardstrom et al. (2017). Data analysis was done using descriptive statistics (mean, standard deviation) and inferential statistics (univariate covariance analysis method) in SPSS version 22. Also, to compare the two groups in terms of gender, the Chi–square test was used, and to compare the age and history of methadone use, the t test of two independent groups was used. The significance level of the tests was set at 0.05.
Results: The results showed that music therapy improved physical function (p<0.001), physical role limitation (p<0.001), general health (p=0.044), and mental role limitation (p=0.045) in the experimental group compared to the control group. Also, the intervention significantly decreased the intention to consume (p<0.001), negative reinforcement (p<0.001), and perceived control (p<0.001) in the experimental group compared to the control group.
Conclusion: Based on the study findings, music therapy can play an essential role in reducing cravings and increasing some aspects of quality of life in patients undergoing methadone maintenance treatment.