Music Therapy Essay Research Paper Music therapy

Music Therapy Essay, Research Paper

Music therapy is the prescribed use of music and musical interventions in order

to restore, maintain, and improve emotional, physical, physiological, and

spiritual health and well-being (Lindberg). So one finds the selections under

the New Age/Relaxation section of the record store about as relaxing as water

torture? Just because one’s taste runs more to Sousa than to soothing doesn’t

mean one can’t reap all these relaxation benefits music is supposed to have.

Music therapy works primarily by changing moods, which alters brain chemistry.

This can have many effects–making concentration easier, easing anxiety and

fostering patience(Hendrick-16). "Music," as the old saying goes,

"has charms to soothe the savage beast." It can improve a person’s

psychological, cognitive, and social functioning–especially when it has

familiar lyrics that evoke pleasant memories and a strong , repetitive beat that

makes it easy to follow along (Sacks). "(Rhythm) is there in the cycles of

the seasons, in the migrations of the birds and animals, in the fruiting and

withering of plants, and in the birth, maturation, and death of

ourselves."–Mickey Hart of Grateful Dead "(Music Therapy) can make

the difference between withdrawal and awareness, between isolation and

interaction, between chronic pain and comfort, between demoralization and

dignity."–Barbara Crowe (Quotes About…) "It lifts us from our

frozen mental habits and makes our minds move in ways they ordinarily

cannot…when the sound stops, we fall back into our mental wheelchairs."–

Robert Jourdain (McDonnel-C05) Music Therapy benefits many types of people, such

as the mentally ill, abused, terminally ill, developmental learning disabled,

and academic learning disabled. The goals of music therapy include improving

self-esteem, improving social interactions with peers, increasing participation,

developing coping skills, reducing stress anxiety, creating a non-abusive

lifestyle, decreasing fear, decreasing pain, and behavior management, just to

name a few (Lindberg). "Almost all children respond to music. Music is an

open-sesame and if you can use it carefully and appropriately, you can reach

into that child’s potential for development." –Dr. Clive Robbins (Quotes

About..) Preliminary findings of a nearly completed study at Beth Israel to be

published in 1998, show that music performs as well as or sometimes better than

sedation in calming children before tests such as EEG’s and CAT scans. Music has

a lot of universality. You bypass so many barriers to communication, and it

seems to reach more of the child than anything else." –Clive Robbins

(McDonnel-C05) "In people who are depressed, the ratio of pleasant to

unpleasant events gets out of balance." (Munson;Walsh42) It’s likely that

both the music and the human contact increased the number of pleasant events for

people involved. "With music, it’s not just that these pleasant events are

happening to you. You are in some ways taking control to make the pleasant

events happen." –Larry Thompson,PhD (Munson;Walsh-42) If anxiety is

involved in depression, as it often is, the right kind of music may help someone

de-stress. This doesn’t necessarily mean you can blast Pearl Jam and call it

therapy, or that you can write off your CD collection as a medical expense, but

it might reinforce your idea that Glenn Miller means more than ocean sounds to

your mental state (Munson;Walsh-42). Music can relieve stress whether the stress

comes from the work-place or something more serious like a major illness (Luque).

Ancient cultures used sound to affect the chemical balance of the brain. The

positive statements were added to remove the feelings of helplessness from

patients and return them to a sense of control. "(It might) not neccesarily

cure them, but it can change things. It might not be quantity for extending

life, but it is quality in enjoying life more. The brain is impacted by what it

perceives. What we are trying to do is change the negative to a positive, and it

all translates into physiology. It’s more than just sounding mystical, a

fantasy. There’s medical reality. There is real potential for healing in music,

imagery, and positive affirmations."–Dr. Lee S. Berk (Luque) It’s hard for

many mental patients to put their frustrations into words, but music therapy

lets them communicate their feelings freely through the expression of enjoyment

of music (Lindberg, B.). The music helps underscore the message (Hendrick-16).

The order, harmony, and beauty of music seizes our imaginations and emotions and

contrasts with the chaos of everyday life. "While physical movement is

choked with the starts and stops and stumbles, music establishes a continuous

flow, and does it in perfect prop

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