Cancer patients benefit from music therapy
The German Institute for Quality and Efficiency in Health Care (IQWiG) confirms that music therapy improves the health-related quality of life and subjective well-being of cancer patients.
The IQWiG found that, in particular, accompanying psychological symptoms such as fatigue, anxiety, stress, tension and mood swings are favorably influenced in the short term by music therapy interventions. It recommends that music therapy be regulated by law as part of a future uniform professional and training law in Germany.
According to Lutz Neugebauer, Chairman of the Board of the German Music Therapy Association (DMtG), music and dance therapy is listed as an exclusion in the annex to the German Therapeutic Products Directive from 1992. The reasons for this can neither be found nor verified today. A new assessment is therefore needed. The German Music Therapy Society has long been calling for the exclusion to be withdrawn so that German health insurance companies can offer these forms of therapy to their policyholders.
