including behaviors as measured by brief psychiatric rating scale
(BPRS) (Choi, 2000) as well as social skills (Hong, Cheung, & Choi,
2011) for schizophrenic patients with depression. In the same vein,
the group music therapy developed for the present study integrated
social interaction opportunities into the music therapy with various
activities that may enable the participants to express their feelings,
which consequently led to positive behavioral changes.
The findings of the present study should be considered with the
following limitations. First, the group assignment was not random
due to the potential contamination of treatment among the study
participants.We selected both groups from the psychiatric units that
were similar in terms of the severity of diagnosis and the frequencies
of providing routine care to the patients. However, we cannot
eliminate the potential confounding factor existing in unit differences.
Second, the study participants who agreed to participatemay
be different from the general population of patients with schizophrenia
in terms of motivation and performance. The experimental
and control groups were categorized as borderline schizophrenia. It
would be difficult to generalize the study findings to those with a
different disease severity. Third, we also recommend further studies
to examine the long-term effectiveness of group music therapy by
incorporating 6-month, 1-year and 2-year follow-ups.