The effect of mental illness on the emotional experience of music

Psychiatric patients (N=107) were studied regarding the importance of pertaining to a diagnostic group for the variation of emotional experience in music. The diagnostic groups chosen were: schizophrenic, depressive and manic psychosis, obsessive, depressive, anxiety and hysterical neurosis. As stimuli seven newly composed pieces of music orchestrated for a small symphony orchestra were used. The assessment of emotional experience was accomplished by semantic differential scales measuring the factors tension-relaxation, gaiety-gloom and attraction-repulsion. The most conspicuous findings were: the anxiety neurosis patients experienced the music as neutral in tension and gaiety, but repulsive. Hysterics experienced more gaiety and attraction together with varying degrees of tension, obsessives more tension, depressive psychotics more gloom and schizophrenics more attraction than other groups.