Outpatient music group therapy for treatment of tinnitus Rostock concept and preliminary study results on effectiveness

Background: Subjective tinnitus, from which about 20-25% of the population suffer fromacute forms and 4% fromchronic forms, comprises an auditory perceptionwithout an externally recognizable sound source. Although the current guidelines for tinnitus treatment also recommend psychosomatic diagnosis and, if necessary, (co)treatment, to date there have been few targeted psychosomatic therapy approaches for tinnitus. Objective: With the aim of reducing the subjective symptomburden by linking tinnitus with the emotional state and stress of those affected, a concept for outpatient music group therapy intervention was developed. Method: The study was conducted as a monocentric, uncontrolled, single-group evaluation study in a pre-post design. Treatment in a closed group of 7-9 participants is manualized as short-term therapy over 10 weekly sessions of 90min. Group psychotherapy, music therapy, and relaxation are integrated in a psychodynamic context. In addition to an initial diagnostic test, participants were psychometrically tested before, at the end, and 6 months after the intervention. The tinnitus impairment questionnaire (TBF-12) and the mini-tinnitus questionnaire (Mini-TF) were used to assess the specific symptom burden and the brief symptom inventory (BSI) was used to assess the general symptom burden. Results: To date, 7 outpatient music group therapies have been completed with a total of 50 participants. The symptom burden of tinnitus (Mini-TF) was on average severe at the beginning of treatment and moderate after completion of therapy. An improvement could be demonstrated especially in the emotional-cognitive domain of the TBF-12. In contrast, there was no relevant change in general psychopathology during the course of treatment, neither for the total score of the BSI nor for the syndrome scales. Conclusion: The initial findings show that the outpatientmusic group therapy program can significantly reduce the subjective symptom burden of tinnitus; however, the results need to be further evaluated on a larger sample, in comparison to other treatment methods, and with respect to stability.