"Oncological patients are frequently faced with cancer- and treatment-related pain leading to existential frustration, experiences to loneliness, and a loss of meaning in life. To tackle these issues, the study applied Viktor Frankl´s concept of meaning fulfillment to Cinese clinical circumstances. It suggests a music therapeutic model tailored to individual sociocultural conditions and provides a semi-standardised approach to alleviate cancer-related distress.

Results: The participants´ anxiety and depression levels decreased significantly after intervention, and symptoms related to quality of life decreased considerably during music therapy. Quantitative results are consistent with qualitative findings. The study suggests that meaning oriented music therapy is a feasible and culturally sensitive complementary medical intervention for holistic cancer care."

Qi Mao, Wolfgang Mastnak, Ying Pang, Yi He, Zhongge Su, Ting Zhou, Ruiyuan Guan, Lili Tang: Meaning oriented music therapy improves psychological distress in gastric cancer patients: a mixed methods pilot study. In: Musik-, Tanz- & Kunsttherapie 2/2025. https://doi.org/10.2440/005-0063