To evaluate the effects of music on improving psychosomatic distress in severe patients.

The data were collected via China national knowledge infrastructure (From January 1979 to December 2014), Vip journal integration platform (From January 1989 to December 2014) and Wanfang data (From January 1982 to December 2014), conducted by two researchers separately. The inclusive literatures were related to the intervention effects of music on anxiety and depression in severe patients, and the data were analyzed by Meta-analysis. The searching strategies determined by the first author; the third party would be involved into the determination in case of the divergence emerged.

The researchers invited 11 literatures into the study and randomly compared them. Meta-analysis demonstrated that music had protective function on anxiety and the WMD(weighted mean difference)values for SAS, VAS and TAI were: -10.13 (95%CI: -14.56, -5.69), -0.73 (95%CI: -1.21, -0.24) and -3.71 (95%CI: -5.18, -2.25); the WMD values for SDS and for UCLA were -0.05 (95%CI: -0.08, -0.03) and -6.24 (95%CI: -8.62, -3.87), suggested that music had protective effects on depression and on loneliness; the WMD values for sleeping time and awakening time were 1.09 (95%CI: 0.72, 1.45) and -0.93 (95%CI: -1.49, -0.36), suggested that music could significantly increase the sleeping time and reduce the awakening time in order to cope with sleep disorder; the WMD value for blood pressure was -5.41 (95%CI: -20.08, 9.27), suggested that the protective effects of music on blood pressure was uncertain; the WMD value for heart rate was -12.35 (95%CI: -14.68, -10.01), suggested that music could protectively reduce the heart rate.

Music should be highly recommended for it plays a significant role in dealing with psychosomatic distress such as anxiety, depression, lonely and sleep insufficiency.

Intensive care units; Psychosomatic distress; Music intervention; Meta-analysis