Reducing Anxiety through Music Therapy at an Outpatient Eating Disorder Recovery Service

The authors of this study aimed to reduce post-meal related anxiety for people with eating disorders through participation in group music therapy in an outpatient day program. A purposively-inclusive pilot study design was adopted which utilized the self-report Subjective Units of Distress Scale (SUDS) to measure anxiety pre and post a single session. A total of 13 female participants attended a onehour music therapy group session following a lunchtime social eating challenge and contributed to 50 occasions of data collection. A paired two-tailed t-test indicated a highly statistically significant difference (p = < 0.0001) between the pre and post session scores, suggesting that music therapy significantly decreased anxiety.