Music Therapy For Medical And Psychiatric Disorders

Music therapy (????? ????????) is an evidence-based clinical use of musical interventions to improve clients’ quality of life. Music therapists use music and its many facets-physical, emotional, mental, social, aesthetic, and spiritual. It helps clients improve their health in cognitive, motor, emotional, communicative, social, sensory, and educational domains by using both active and receptive music experiences. Evidence suggests that music therapy is beneficial for all individuals, both physically and mentally. The benefits of music therapy include improved heart rate, reduced anxiety, stimulation of the brain, and improved learning. Studies on patients diagnosed with mental disorders such as anxiety, depression, and schizophrenia have shown visible improvement in their mental health after music therapy. Siddha Spirituality of Swami Hardas Life System appeals to our valuable readers to avail of the benefits for well-being.

Music therapy Definition (????? ???????? ?? ???????)

Music therapy is an effective and useful technique of complementary medicine that uses music prescribed in a skilled manner by trained therapists.  Programs are designed to help patients overcome physical, emotional, intellectual, and social challenges. Applications range from improving the well-being of geriatric patients in nursing homes to lowering the stress level and pain of women in labor. Music therapy is used in many settings, including schools,  rehabilitation centers, hospitals, hospices, nursing homes, community centers, and sometimes even at home.

Music therapy Types (????? ???????? ?? ??????)

There are two fundamental types of music therapy:

• Receptive, and
• Active music therapy.

Active music therapy engages clients or patients in the act of making vocal or instrumental music, whereas receptive music therapy guides patients or clients in listening to live or recorded music.

Receptive (????????)

This music therapy involves listening to recorded or live music selected by a therapist. It can improve mood, decrease stress, decrease pain, enhance relaxation, and decrease anxiety. Although it doesn’t affect disease, it can help with coping skills.

Active (??????)

With active music therapy, patients engage in some form of music-making, either by singing or by playing instruments. Researchers at Baylor, Scott, and White Universities are studying the effect of harmonica playing on patients with COPD in order to determine if it helps improve lung function. Another example takes place in a nursing home in Japan: therapists teach the elderly how to play easy-to-use instruments so they can overcome physical difficulties.

Characteristics of Music therapy (????? ???????? ?? ?????)

Bonny writes a lot about the different features of music types in the classical genre.

Classical music can have multiple layers, including a melodic line, harmony structure, and baseline. All of these aspects work together with other things to create different layers of musical sound, which is written in different forms:

• Ternary form
• Sonata form
• Theme and variations
• Prelude, and
• Tone poem.

Ternary form (?????? ???)

• Associated with the Baroque era
• For therapy work
• Forms a stable and safe musical container, where the repetition of the open section that is recognizable before the period of change

Sonata form (?????? ???)

• Associated with the Classical and Romantic era
• Composed of three parts: introduction, exposition, development, and recapitulation

Theme and variations (??? ?? ?????)

• Uses different eras of music composition
• The melody might become elongated by making each note twice its original length, or shortened by making each note half the length

Prelude (??????????)

• A short piece for an orchestra that is already completed
• The most receptive music therapy is Debussy’s “Prelude to the Afternoon of a Faun” and Ravel’s “Pavane for a Dead Princess”

Tone poem (???? ?????)

• From the Romantic Era and the 20th century
• Examples include “Ein Heldenleben” and “Enchanted Lake”

New-age music (?? ????? ?? ?????)

• Allows relaxation while drawing images like landscapes enhanced by computer-generated sounds
• Kobialka is a type of new age music that produces large volume music that has violins playing over the background of synthesized sounds
• Kobialka is often very relaxing because the quality is seamless

Celtic music (??????? ?????)

• Average in character
• 12 minutes may be able to cause deep relaxation
• One example is the song “Watermark” by Enya

Meditative music (????? ?????)

• Has a diverse range of styles and instrumentation
• Most of them have a single-line melody of a wooden or pan-flute

Trance music (?????? ???)

• Musical therapists who work with adolescent-aged clients often use this type of music.
• Has a tempo between 130 and 160 bpm
• Enhances a feeling of calmness despite the rapid pace

Jazz (???)

• Emerged in the early part of the twentieth century
• Generally known as the music of black Americans
• The blues is a slow kind of jazz music that uses gentle relaxation
• A sedative in receptive music therapy methods
• Examples include “I Got Rhythm” by Louie Armstrong and “In a Mellotone” by Duke Ellington

Musical therapy for children (?????? ?? ??? ????? ????????)

Music therapy may be used with adolescent populations to treat disorders usually diagnosed in adolescence, such as mood/anxiety disorders and eating disorders, or inappropriate behaviors, including suicide attempts, withdrawal from family, social isolation from peers, aggression, running away, and substance abuse.

Goals in treating adolescents, especially those at high risk, often include:

• Increased recognition and awareness of emotions and moods
• Improved decision-making skills
• Opportunities for creative self-expression
• Decreased anxiety
• Increased self-confidence
• Improved self-esteem, and
• Better listening skills.

Methods of Music therapy (????? ???????? ?? ?????)

Among adolescents, group meetings and individual sessions are the main methods. Both methods may include listening to music, discussing concerning moods and emotions in or toward music, analyzing the meanings of specific songs, writing lyrics, composing or performing music, and musical improvisation.

Assessment (?????????)

Assessment includes obtaining a full medical history, musical, and non-musical functioning (social, physical/motor, emotional, etc.).

Premature infants (???????? ????)

Premature infants are those born at 37 weeks after conception or earlier. They are subject to numerous health risks, such as abnormal breathing patterns, decreased body fat and muscle tissue, as well as feeding issues.

Infants in cardiac ICUs (???????? ?????? ??? ????)

Many infants show a decrease in both their average heart and respiratory rates. The infants’ average blood pressure typically decreases after the sessions, as well. Although there are individual differences between each of the infants, most infants show improvements after music therapy interventions.

In children (?????? ???)

Music therapy has multiple benefits that contribute to the maintenance of health and the drive toward rehabilitation for children. Advanced technology that can monitor cortical activity offers a look at how music engages and produces changes in the brain during the perception and production of musical stimuli. Music can both motivate and provide a sense of distraction. Rhythmic stimuli have been found to help balance training for those with a brain injury.

It is thought to be helpful with children with autism spectrum by providing repetitive stimuli which aim to “teach” the brain other possible ways to respond that might be more useful as they grow older. Studies on the long term effects in children with autism indicate many positive effects. 

Music therapy for Medical disorders (???????? ??????? ?? ??? ????? ????????)

Autism (????????????)

Music has played an important role in the research of dealing with autism, mainly in diagnosis, therapy, and behavioral abilities according to a scientific article written by Thenille Braun Janzen and Michael H. Thaut. This article concluded that music can help autistic patients hone their motor and attention skills as well as healthy neurodevelopment of socio-communication and interaction skills. Music therapy also resulted in positive improvement in selective attention, speech production, and language processing and acquisition in autistic patients 

Heart disease (??? ?? ??????)

According to a 2013 Cochrane review, listening to music may improve heart rate, respiratory rate, and blood pressure in those with coronary heart disease (CHD).

Stroke (????)

Music is useful in the recovery of motor skills. In a study on stroke patients in the recovery phase, music therapy was used in addition to other types of therapy in one group of patients and was not used in the other group. While both groups showed an increase in their standard of living, the group that used it showed more of an increase than the group that didn’t.

The group that used also showed less anxiousness and depression after the therapy. While both groups showed an increase in the strength of their non-dominant hands, the group with it showed a much larger increase. 

Dementia (??????)

Dr. Hanne Mette Ridder, a musical therapy expert from Denmark, studied the importance of the roles of musical therapists and caregivers on the mental well-being of patients suffering from dementia.

According to Karen Stuart, South Africa has poor quality services provided by hospital care facilities to elders dealing with dementia, therefore she discovered singing to be an effective method for improving patients’ well-being.

Aphasia (???? ??? ????)

Neurologist Oliver Sacks, author of Musicophilia: Tales of music and the Brain, studied neurological oddities in people, trying to understand how the brain works. He concluded that people with some type of frontal lobe damage often “produced not only severe difficulties with expressive language (aphasia) but strange access of musicality with incessant whistling, singing, and a passionate interest in music.

He was a firm believer that music has the power to heal.

Melodic intonation therapy (MIT), developed in 1973 by neurological researchers Sparks, Helm, and Albert, is a method used by music therapists and speech-language pathologists to help people with communication disorders caused by damage to the left hemisphere of the brain by engaging the singing abilities and possibly engaging language-capable regions in the undamaged right hemisphere.

It is commonly agreed that while speech is lateralized mostly to the left hemisphere, some speech functionality is also distributed in the right hemisphere.

Cancer (?????)

Music interventions may have positive effects on psychological and physical outcomes in people with cancer. A 2016 meta-analysis has found evidence to suggest in people with cancer, music may positively influence anxiety, fatigue, quality of life, pain, heart rate, blood pressure, and respiratory rate. 

Music therapy for Psychiatric disorders (?????? ??????? ?? ??? ????? ????????)

A 2016 meta-analysis on the effects of music therapy in schizophrenic patients showed that the treatment in patients who underwent was more effective than patients who did not undergo music therapy with their treatments. Some of the positive effects that resulted from the sessions include decreased aggression, as well as fewer hallucinations and delusions.

A 2017 theoretical review on the use of music therapy in post-traumatic stress disorder suggests that it may be a useful therapeutic tool to reduce symptoms and improve functioning among individuals with trauma exposure and PTSD, though the more rigorous empirical study is required.

Music therapy usage in different region (??????? ??????? ??? ????? ???????? ?? ?????)

Music therapy in Africa (??????? ??? ????? ????????)

In 1999, the first program in Africa opened in Pretoria, South Africa. Research has shown that in Tanzania patients can receive palliative care for life-threatening illnesses directly after the diagnosis of these illnesses. This is different from many Western countries because they reserve palliative care for patients who have an incurable illness. 

Music therapy in Australia (??????????? ??? ????? ????????)

One of the first groups known to heal with sound were the aboriginal people of Australia. The yidaki produced sounds that are similar to the sound healing techniques used in modern-day.

For at least 40,000 years, the healing tool was believed to assist in healing “broken bones, muscle tears and illnesses of every kind”. However, there are no reliable sources stating the didgeridoo’s exact age.

Music therapy in Canada (????? ??? ????? ????????)

In 1956, Fran Herman, one of Canada’s music therapy pioneers, began a ‘remedial music’ program at the Home For Incurable Children, now known as the Holland Bloorview Kids Rehabilitation Hospital, in Toronto. Its production “The Emperor’s Nightingale” was the subject of a documentary film.

Canada’s first music therapy training program was founded in 1976, at Capilano College (now Capilano University) in North Vancouver, by Nancy McMaster and Carolyn Kenny.

Music therapy in India (???? ??? ????? ????????)

The roots in India can be traced back to ancient Hindu mythology, Vedic texts, and local folk traditions. It is very possible that music therapy has been used for hundreds of years in Indian culture.

The Music Therapy Trust of India is another venture in the country. Margaret Lobo is the founder and director of the Otakar Kraus Music Trust and her work began in 2004.

Music therapy in Norway (?????? ??? ????? ????????)

Its two major research centers are the Center for Music and Health with the Norwegian Academy of Music in Oslo, and the Grieg Academy Centre for Music Therapy (GAMUT), at the University of Bergen.

Norway’s main contribution to the field is mostly in the area of “community music therapy”, which tends to be as much oriented toward social work as individual psychotherapy, and music therapy research from this country uses a wide variety of methods to examine diverse methods across an array of social contexts, including community centers, medical clinics, retirement homes, and prisons.

Music therapy in Nigeria (????????? ??? ????? ????????)

Applying music and thematic sounds to the healing process are believed to help the patient overcome true sickness, which then will seemingly cure the disease.

In the practice of Igbeuku, patients are persuaded to confess their sins which causes themselves to serve discomfort. Following a confession, patients feel emotionally relieved because the priest has announced them clean and subjected them to a rigorous dancing exercise.

The dancing exercise is a “thank you” for the healing and tribute to the spiritual greater beings, which is accompanied by music and can be included among the unorthodox medical practices of Nigerian culture. The use of song and dance in a funeral setting is very common across the continent but especially in Nigeria. 

Music therapy in United States (??????? ????? ??????? ??? ????? ????????)

Music therapy has existed in its current form in the United States since 1944 when the first undergraduate degree program in the world was begun at Michigan State University and the first graduate degree program was established at the University of Kansas.

A degree candidate can earn an undergraduate, master’s, or doctoral degree in music therapy. Many AMTA approved programs offer equivalency and certificate degrees in music therapy for students that have completed a degree in a related field. Some practicing music therapists have held PhDs in fields other than, but usually related to, music therapy.

Music therapy in Lebanon (?????? ??? ????? ????????)

In 2006, Hamda Farhat introduced music therapy to Lebanon, developing and inventing therapeutic methods such as the triple method to treat hyperactivity, depression, anxiety, addiction, and post-traumatic stress disorder. She has met with great success in working with many international organizations, and in the training of therapists, educators, and doctors.

Reference:

• https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Music_therapy
• https://medical-dictionary.thefreedictionary.com/music+therapy#:~:text=Music%20therapy%20is%20a%20technique%20of%20complementary%20medicine,patients%20overcome%20physical%2C%20emotional%2C%20intellectual%2C%20and%20social%20challenges.