Comparison Studies of Chinese Five-element Music Therapy and Western Orchestral Music Therapy on Moderate Depressive Disorders

Abstract

With the developments of society, pace of life has been increased with more intense competition and greater pressures which would drive people into confusion, anxiety, and even depression. The word depression people usually talk refers to Major Depressive Disorder (MDD) according to clinical manifestation. According to statistics by WHO, depression has become the 4th disease around the world and would probably become the 2nd disease in 2020. For quite a long time, all possible clinical treatments have been conducted in order to cure this mental disease. However, the therapeutic effects were not ideal and depression always relapses. With study on depression goes deeper, music was discovered to be magic power. Music can work on cerebral cortex by regular vibration of sound waves and then inspire spirits. Thus music can be used to alleviating stress or pain. This is to say that music must be a powerful tool in curing depression. China is one of the oldest cradles of music therapy. Two thousand years ago, five-element music was proposed to cure depression. However, some original medicine works has been lost from past generations. Modern Chinese music therapists conduct clinical treatment with five-element music on the basis of their own understanding on the special effects of five musical modes which needs to be verified. In this dissertation, series of experiments are designed in turns in order to explore whether five-element music cures MDD through modes and if five-element music has better therapeutic effects on MDD than western orchestral music. In order to realize the purposes, comparisons are made between traditional Chinese five-element music and western classical orchestral music in clinical MDD treatment. On the basis of experiment results and music feature analysis, new explanations of the mechanism of music therapy are proposed. Further suggestions on music therapy in MDD treatments are also given. This dissertation contributes to studies of music therapy, especially five-element music therapy. First, this dissertation provides novel experimental designs on therapeutic effects comparisons between different kinds of music on MDD treatments. Second, the formation of misunderstandings in traditional Chinese music therapy is analyzed from theoretical and clinical aspects. Being different from the traditional theory of musical mode effects, new explanations are proposed based on experimental results and computerized analysis. Third, this study conducts surveys on MDD patients and originally points out the lack of music during self-treatment outside the hospital on the basis of feedbacks. Advantages and feasibility of music therapy outside the hospital are then analyzed.