The Effects of Religion-Based Music Therapy on Emotional State, Anxiety, Perceived Stress Levels of University Students

This article aims to examine the effects of religion-based music therapy on the levels of anxiety, emotional state and the perceived stress of the university students. The research question is stated as follows “Is there any significant effect of the religion-based music therapy on the level of trait anxiety, state anxiety, perceived stress, and emotional state of the university students?” The study design is pretest-post-test experiment, which depends on the data collected between March and June in 2017. The population of this study consists of the Turkish university students in Istanbul. The sample of this study is composed of 80 students at the beginning of the study, and then 58 students are included who are between 19 and 30 years old. The participants filled out the Informed Consent Form and Short Symptom Check-List before participating in the experiment. Excluding criteria of the sample are having psychotic disorder, having idea of getting suicide in the past 6 months, attempting to get suicide in the past 6 months, having chronic illness, having treatment for any kind of illness, attending psychotherapy sessions, having deficiency of hearing, and getting medium or high score of Short Symptom Check-List. Passive music therapy methods were applied in all sessions of this study. The experimental group listened the stressful voices, and the religious-based songs with closed-eyes in each sessions once a week for a month. The control group listened stressful voices solely, and then they stayed slient with closed-eyes as long as the religious-song. Religious songs are composed of “Hijaz tune” which is the type of the classical Turkish musical tunes. At the first session, instrumental song in Hijaz tune which is composed by Ay？e Ba？ak ？LHAN HARMANCI for this study, is performed by a musician with nay (reed flute). At the second and third sessions, Turkish religious songs in Hijaz tune are played via CD player. At the last session, the record of the same instrumental song of the first session is played via CD player. Participants filled out the same scales at the end of the sessions. Then, the same scales are filled in by the participants one month later for follow-up results. The scales which are administered in this study are the Demographic Information Form, State-Trait Anxiety Inventory (STAI TX-I-II), Positive-Negative Affect Scale (PANAS), and Perceieved Stress Level Scale. Demographic form consists of the questions about the socio-demographic variables of the participants, which are gender, age, marital status, having the idea of getting suicide,