Decreasing the Depression of Elderly Through Instrumental Music Therapy

Abstract

Depression is a serious mental disorder characterized by feelings of sadness and anxiety. Depression is not often detected in the elderly because it is considered as a result of the aging process and chronic illness experienced by the elderly. If it is untreated, it can be fatal condition; one of them is suicide attempt. Many therapies are used to treat depression in the elderly, like instrumental music therapy. The purpose of this study was to find out instrumental music therapy on the depression level of the elderly. This study was a pre-experiment using pretest-posttest design. The number of samples used was 25 elderlies with depression problems. The sample in this study was taken using consecutive sampling technique which was analyzed using Wilcoxon test. The analysis showed that p value = 0.014 (p value <0.05), which means that there was an effect of instrumental music therapy on the depression level of elderly in Bali Province Mental Hospital. Bali Province Mental Hospital is expected to be able to implement instrumental music therapy as a complementary therapy to help accelerate the improvement of conditions in the elderly who experience depression.