Mindful Jazz and Preferred Music Interventions Reduce Pain Among Patients With Chronic Pain and Anxiety: A Pilot Randomized Controlled Trial.
Sean D Young, Josh Kim, Adam W. Hanley
Cureus March 1, 2025 DOI: 10.7759/cureus.80485 (opens in new tab)
Study at a glance
AI-extracted from the abstract| Characteristics | Randomized controlled trial Pilot study Peer reviewed |
|---|---|
| Sample size | 120 |
| Population | Adults with chronic musculoskeletal pain |
| Interventions | Mindful Music Listening Music Education |
| Duration | 4-week intervention |
| Topics | Anxiety |
| Keywords | : anxiety Chronic pain management Listening to music Mindfulness-based interventions Music intervention |
| Citations | 1 |
| Key findings | Mindfully listening to music, whether preferred or jazz, reduces pain intensity and anxiety more than music education alone, with a greater proportion of participants achieving a clinically meaningful pain reduction. |
Abstract
A mindfulness-based intervention (MBI) focused on listening to music might reduce chronic pain and provide a new approach to overcoming challenges from traditional MBIs (e.g., breathing). Due to the potential unpredictability and unfamiliarity of jazz, an MBI focused on listening to improvisational jazz music might be a particularly efficacious pain reduction intervention. This pilot study explores whether mindfully listening to music, including jazz, can reduce pain-related outcomes. Chronic musculoskeletal pain (CMP) participants (n=30 per group, N = 120 total) were enrolled online between 12/7/2023 and 2/8/2024. Participants were randomly assigned to one of four groups in a 2 (Mindful Music Listening/Intervention vs. Music Education/Control) X 2 (Preferred Music (choose their own music genre) vs Jazz (assigned to listen to improvisational jazz)) experiment, for a total of four groups (Mindful Jazz, Mindful Music, Jazz Education, and Music Education). Patients in each group were provided with training in either mindful listening to music (Intervention groups) or music education (Control groups) and given four sets of weekly recordings related to their group for daily listening/practice. Patients completed online surveys on pain-related outcomes (e.g., pain catastrophizing, pain intensity, and anxiety) pre- and post-training (immediate outcomes), and throughout a four-week period (longer-term outcomes). The main outcomes analyses compared the intervention and control groups, with secondary sub-analyses among participants who listened to at least 2/3 of their recordings (10 minutes), and among those who experienced a clinically meaningful (20%) reduction in pain. Mindful Jazz and Mindful Music (Intervention) participants reported significantly less pain intensity (p 20% decrease in pain intensity more frequently than Jazz Education (Χ2=48.71, p20% decrease in pain intensity differed significantly ((Χ2=84.03, p<0.001): Jazz Education, 29%; Music Education, 26%, Mindful Jazz, 50%; Mindful Music 41%). Mindfully listening to music can help to reduce pain-related outcomes. Both music education (i.e., music listening without mindfulness training) and mindfully listening to music (i.e., listening with mindfulness training) helped to decrease pain and anxiety from baseline to follow-up. However, mindful listening reduced pain to a greater amount compared to music education, suggesting that mindfully listening to music is a more impactful pain reduction intervention compared to listening without mindfulness training. Future research is warranted with a larger sample.
Comparable studies
Other randomized controlled trials on anxiety, most cited first.
Citations in the library
Cites 6
- Online mindfulness as a promising method to improve exercise capacity in heart disease: 12-month follow-up of a randomized controlled trial PLoS One May 9, 2017
- Mindfulness-Oriented Recovery Enhancement for Addictive Behavior, Psychiatric Distress, and Chronic Pain: A Multilevel Meta-Analysis of Randomized Controlled Trials. Mindfulness September 15, 2022
- Mindfulness-Oriented Recovery Enhancement vs Supportive Group Therapy for Co-occurring Opioid Misuse and Chronic Pain in Primary Care JAMA Internal Medicine February 28, 2022
- Unpleasant meditation-related experiences in regular meditators: Prevalence, predictors, and conceptual considerations PLoS One May 9, 2019
- Mindfulness Meditation for Chronic Pain: Systematic Review and Meta-analysis Annals of Behavioral Medicine September 22, 2016
and 1 more in the library