PURPOSE: Awareness for the importance of psychological and spiritual needs in patients with terminal diseases has increased in recent years. While clinical trials have demonstrated the potential of psychosocial interventions in cancer populations, it remains a challenge to transfer existing protocols to end-of-life situations. The present study aims to investigate the efficacy of the innovative biographical music therapy intervention “Song of Life” (SOL) regarding the emotional and psycho-spiritual dimensions of quality of life in palliative care patients.

PATIENTS AND METHODS: 104 inpatients from two palliative care units were randomly assigned to three sessions of either SOL music therapy (experimental group, EG) or relaxation as an active control group (CG). The primary outcome was the pre-to-post intervention change in psychological quality of life. Secondary outcomes included spiritual well-being, ego-integrity, momentary distress, and global quality of life. A feedback questionnaire was used as an explorative measure of treatment satisfaction in both a patient and family member version. Analysis of covariance with multiply imputed data was used for primary analysis. Sensitivity analysis was performed with all available data using multilevel modeling.

RESULTS: No significant differences were found regarding psychological and global quality of life, but SOL participants reported significantly higher spiritual well-being (p = .039) and ego-integrity (p < .001), as well as lower distress (p = .046) than patients in the CG. Both patients’ and family members’ treatment satisfaction was higher after SOL with large between-group effect sizes on items asking for meaningfulness (d = 0.96) and importance (d = 1.00).

CONCLUSION: Our findings provide evidence that SOL is an effective biographical music therapy intervention to facilitate psycho-spiritual integration in terminally ill patients.