The Effects of Group Music Therapy on the Emotional Health of Residents in Long-Term Care Facilities: A Pilot Study

The goal of this pilot study is to learn whether group music therapy improves the emotional health of residents living in long-term care facilities. It will also examine the feasibility of integrating an artificial intelligence (AI)-based emotion recognition model into routine psychosocial interventions. The main questions it aims to answer are: Does group music therapy improve positive affect and reduce negative affect, depression, and loneliness among long-term care residents? Are AI-based facial emotion recognition results consistent with residents' self-reported emotional assessments? Researchers will use a one-group pretest-posttest quasi-experimental design to evaluate changes before and after a 6-week group music therapy program. The study will also compare subjective questionnaire results with objective facial emotion recognition outputs generated by the PaLI Gemma 2 multimodal model. Participants will: Attend one 60-minute group music therapy session per week for 6 weeks Complete emotional health questionnaires before the first session and after the sixth session Be recorded during sessions using a non-invasive camera system for facial emotion analysis Have their questionnaire results compared with AI-based emotion recognition outputs to evaluate consistency and feasibility This pilot study will provide preliminary evidence regarding both the psychological benefits of group music therapy and the feasibility of applying AI-supported multimodal emotion assessment in long-term care settings.