Disturbed Sleep Patterns And Self Worth In Youth: A Music Therapy Intervention

Sleep, a vital ingredient in life, is an active and complex rhythmic state that may get disturbed by a variety of reasons. Daytime sleepiness, sleep deprivation, and irregular sleep schedules are highly prevalent among college students, as 50% report daytime sleepiness and 70% attain insufficient sleep. The study aims to evaluate the efficacy of music therapy in improving disturbed sleep patterns and low self-worth of university students. It was hypothesized that Post-intervention sleep quality scores in experimental group would be significantly better than pre-intervention scores; and Music therapy would enhance self-worth of university students. Participants in the experimental group would show improved self-worth relative to the participants in the control group. A pre-post experimental-control assessment design was adopted. The Pittsburgh Sleep Quality Index (Buysse DJ et al 1989) and Contingencies of Self Worth (Crocker & Luhtanen, 2002) were administered to identify university students having faulty sleep patterns and low self-worth. Music therapy was given for consecutive three weeks for half an hour daily. After intervention, sleep quality index and contingencies of self-worth were re-administered to see the efficacy of music therapy. Results revealed that music therapy made a significant improvement in students’ sleep patterns as significant difference was observed between both experimental and control groups on Subjective sleep quality (t=1.21*), Sleep latency (t=2.63*), Sleep duration (t=2.24*), Habitual sleep efficiency (t=4.64**), Sleep disturbances (t=10.46**), and Daytime dysfunction (t=3.97*). The effect of intervention was also found to be significant for self-worth domains for subjects of experimental group on physical appearance (t=2.42*), Outdoing others in competition (t=1.39*), Academic competence (t=2.16*), Being a virtuous or moral person (t=2.09*), and God’s love (t=1.64*) as the difference between experimental and control group came out to be statistically significant. Key words: sleep patterns, self worth, music, music therapy