Music therapy is an effective complimentary treatment for many conditions, especially anxiety and depression. Certified music therapists are trained to use music to help clients with all aspects of health, including psychological and physical wellbeing. Activities often include listening to, performing, improvising, or composing music, either alone, in a group, or alongside the therapist. Music can also be combined with other modalities such as movement, art, or imagery.
Music is also often used by medical professionals to help provide natural anxiety relief during procedures such as surgery, chemotherapy treatments, and mammograms or blood tests.Studies show that music can effectively reduce pain and anxiety in children undergoing common pediatric medical procedures like blood draws or immunizations
How Does Music Therapy Provide Natural Anxiety Relief?
One of the major reasons music therapy is so effective is that music can shift your focus away from a stressful or uncomfortable event to something pleasant and soothing. In that way, it serves as a distraction. But music therapy does more than just that; music can help to reduce stress and anxiety through multiple pathways. It affects physiological factors like heart rate and hormone levels, modulates the nervous system, and has psychological effects, as well.
Music therapy is an effective complimentary treatment for many conditions, especially anxiety and depression. Certified music therapists are trained to use music to help clients with all aspects of health, including psychological and physical wellbeing. Activities often include listening to, performing, improvising, or composing music, either alone, in a group, or alongside the therapist. Music can also be combined with other modalities such as movement, art, or imagery.
Music is also often used by medical professionals to help provide natural anxiety relief during procedures such as surgery, chemotherapy treatments, and mammograms or blood tests.Studies show that music can effectively reduce pain and anxiety in children undergoing common pediatric medical procedures like blood draws or immunizations.
Who can benefit from music therapy?
Children, adolescents, adults, and the elderly with mental health needs, developmental and learning disabilities, Alzheimer’s disease and other aging related conditions, substance abuse problems, brain injuries, physical disabilities, and acute and chronic pain, including mothers in labor.
What is the history of music therapy as a health care profession?
The idea of music as a healing influence which could affect health and behavior is as least as old as the writings of Aristotle and Plato. The 20th century discipline began after World War I and World War II when community musicians of all types, both amateur and professional, went to Veterans hospitals around the country to play for the thousands of veterans suffering both physical and emotional trauma from the wars. The patients’ notable physical and emotional responses to music led the doctors and nurses to request the hiring of musicians by the hospitals. It was soon evident that the hospital musicians needed some prior training before entering the facility and so the demand grew for a college curriculum. The first music therapy degree program in the world, founded at Michigan State University in 1944, celebrated its 50th anniversary in 1994. The American Music Therapy Association was founded in 1998 as a union of the National Association for Music Therapy and the American Association for Music therapy.
Is there research to support music therapy?
A vast amount of research exploring the benefits of music as therapy through publication of the Journal of Music Therapy, Music Therapy Perspectives and other sources. A substantial body of literature exists to support the effectiveness of music therapy.