Self-esteem in schizophrenic patients is low. Self-esteem is the most important factor in these patients improvement and music therapy enhances self-esteem.

This study has been conducted with the aim of examination the effect of music therapy on self-esteem of chronic schizophrenic patients.

In This experimental research regarding pilot study and inclusion criteria, 70 persons of male in-patient chronic schizophrenic patients were determined and allocated in 3 groups: experimental 1(24 persons), experimental 2(22 persons) and control group (24 persons) randomly. Music game was implemented in experimental group 1 and lyric analysis in experimental group 2 for one month, 12 sessions, lasting 45 minutes each. Demographic questionnaire and Coopersmith self-esteem Inventory were measured. In internal consistency assessment, chronbach’.α 0/84 and in test-retest reliability, pearson correlation coefficient 0/89 were determined. SPSS version 15 and one way ANOVA, paired t test, Chi-square, Kolmogorov-Smirnov, levene's tests were used for data analysis.

There was not significant difference between self-esteem of patients in experimental and control groups before music therapy and between experimental groups 1 and 2 after music therapy (P>0/05) whereas there was significant difference between experimental and control groups and in intervention groups 1 and 2 after music therapy (P< 0/05).

Music therapy enhances self-esteem in chronic schizophrenic patients and also there was not considerable change in self-esteem increase between music game and lyric analysis. These two types of music therapy can be used in enhancing self-esteem of these patients.