The need for robust critique of arts and health research: Young people, music therapy and mental health

We describe work in progress to conduct a systematic review of research on the effects of arts-based programmes for mental health in young people. We are at the stage of searching for relevant studies through major databases and screening extant systematic reviews for additional research which meets our inclusion criteria. At this stage, however, concerns have arisen regarding both the quality of existing primary studies and of recently published systematic reviews in this area of arts and health. In a previous paper (Grebosz-Haring, et al., under review), we focused on a research paper on art therapy and adolescent girls with ‘internalizing’ and ‘externalizing’ problems, and its inclusion in three systematic reviews, and expressed serious concerns. In this paper, we extend the scope of our critical scrutiny to a research paper on music therapy with children described as having ‘anxiety disorders’ (Goldbeck & Ellerkamp, 2012), and its treatment in three recent systematic reviews /meta-analyses (Ponomarenko, et al., 2017; Geipel, et al., 2018, and Lu, et al., 2021). We demonstrate substantial limitations in the Goldbeck and Ellerkamp paper which seriously undermine the conclusion they reach regarding the effectiveness of music therapy in the remission of anxiety disorders. We also show that the reviews make glaring errors in the treatment of the Goldbeck and Ellerkamp research, which cast serious doubts on their dependability. Drawing on recent criticisms of systematic reviewing and meta-analysis, we consider the value of proceeding with our systematic review as initially planned.