How music is chosen and used in psychedelic-assisted therapy trials: a systematic review

The question

How is music selected and used during psychedelic-assisted psychotherapy in published clinical studies, and is there any shared standard?

What they did

Researchers searched five research databases (PubMed, PsycNet, Web of Science, Scopus and Cochrane) following PRISMA, a standard checklist for conducting and reporting systematic reviews. They looked for clinical studies of psychedelic-assisted psychotherapy and recorded what each said about music: how playlists were built, what the playlists contained, and what the treatment setting was like. They then compared these practices across studies.

What they found

The search returned 36 articles, and 25 of them mentioned using music. The studies most often involved depressive disorders and post-traumatic stress disorder, and most often used psilocybin or MDMA. Practices varied considerably from study to study, partly because different conditions and substances were being studied, but also because no standardized protocol for music exists. The review did not report a pooled effect of music on treatment outcomes.

The fine print

This is a review of how studies describe their methods, not a test of whether music helps; no outcome data were pooled and no numbers of participants were reported in the abstract. Reporting about music in trial write-ups is often brief, so what is counted here may understate or misrepresent what actually happened in sessions. The included studies differed in substance, condition and design, which limits comparison. This summary is based on the abstract only.

What it means

Music is a near-universal but unstandardized part of psychedelic-assisted therapy research, which makes it hard to know what role it plays in any reported benefits.

Evidence grade: Low. A descriptive systematic review that counts and compares study procedures rather than pooling outcome data, drawing on trials that differ widely in substance, condition and method.

This summary is based on the study’s published abstract.