Music Therapy

Music therapy is the use of interventions to accomplish individual goals within a therapeutic relationship by a professional who has completed an approved music therapy program.[1] Music therapy is an allied health profession and one of the expressive therapies, consisting of a process in which a music therapist uses music and all of its facets—physical, emotional, mental, social, aesthetic, and spiritual—to help clients improve their physical and mental health. Music therapists primarily help clients improve their health in several domains, such as cognitive functioning, motor skills, emotional development, social skills, and quality of life, by using music experiences such as free improvisation, singing, and listening to, discussing, and moving to music to achieve treatment goals. It has a wide qualitative and quantitative research literature base and incorporates clinical therapy, psychotherapy, biomusicology, musical acoustics, music theory, psychoacoustics, embodied music cognition, aesthetics of music, sensory integration, and comparative musicology. Referrals to music therapy services may be made by other health care professionals such as physicians, psychologists, physical therapists, and occupational therapists. Clients can also choose to pursue music therapy services without a referral (i.e., self-referral).

Music therapists are found in nearly every area of the helping professions. Some commonly found practices include developmental work (communication, motor skills, etc.) with individuals with special needs, songwriting and listening in reminiscence/orientation work with the elderly, processing and relaxation work, and rhythmic entrainment for physical rehabilitation in stroke victims. Music therapy is also used in some medical hospitals, cancer centers, schools, alcohol and drug recovery programs, psychiatric hospitals, and correctional facilities.[2]

Approaches

Approaches used in music therapy that have emerged from the field of education include Orff-Schulwerk (Orff), Dalcroze Eurhythmics, and Kodaly. Models that developed directly out of music therapy are Neurologic Music Therapy (NMT), Nordoff-Robbins and the Bonny Method of Guided Imagery and Music.[3]

Music therapists may work with individuals who have behavioral-emotional disorders.[4] To meet the needs of this population, music therapists have taken current psychological theories and used them as a basis for different types of music therapy. Different models include behavioral therapy, cognitive behavioral therapy, and psychodynamic therapy.[5]

One therapy model based on neuroscience, called “neurological music therapy” (NMT), is “based on a neuroscience model of music perception and production, and the influence of music on functional changes in non-musical brain and behavior functions.”[6] In other words, NMT studies how the brain is without music, how the brain is with music, measures the differences, and uses these differences to cause changes in the brain through music that will eventually affect the client non-musically. As one researcher, Dr. Thaut, said: “The brain that engages in music is changed by engaging in music.”[7] NMT trains motor responses (i.e. tapping foot or fingers, head movement, etc.) to better help clients develop motor skills that help “entrain the timing of muscle activation patterns”.[8]

History

Music has been used as a healing implement for centuries.[53] Apollo is the ancient Greek god of music and of medicine. Aesculapius was said to cure diseases of the mind by using song and music, and music therapy was used in Egyptian temples. Plato said that music affected the emotions and could influence the character of an individual. Aristotle taught that music affects the soul and described music as a force that purified the emotions. Aulus Cornelius Celsus advocated the sound of cymbals and running water for the treatment of mental disorders. Music therapy was practiced in biblical times, when David played the harp to rid King Saul of a bad spirit.[105] As early as 400 B.C., Hippocrates played music for mental patients. In the thirteenth century, Arab hospitals contained music-rooms for the benefit of the patients.[106] In the United States, Native American medicine men often employed chants and dances as a method of healing patients.[107] The Turco-Persian psychologist and music theorist al-Farabi (872–950), known as Alpharabius in Europe, dealt with music therapy in his treatise Meanings of the Intellect, in which he discussed the therapeutic effects of music on the soul.[108] Robert Burton wrote in the 17th century in his classic work, The Anatomy of Melancholy, that music and dance were critical in treating mental illness, especially melancholia.[109][110][111] Music therapy as we know it began in the aftermath of World Wars I and II, when, particularly in the United Kingdom, musicians would travel to hospitals and play music for soldiers suffering from war-related emotional and physical trauma.[112]

Power of Music by Louis Gallait. A brother and sister resting before an old tomb. The brother is attempting to comfort his sibling by playing the violin, and she has fallen into a deep sleep, “oblivious of all grief, mental and physical.”

[1]. American Music Therapy Association, 2013. Web.

[2]. “About Music Therapy & AMTA”. American Music Therapy Association, 2011. Web. 9 November 2011.

[3]. Davis, Gfeller, Thaut (2008). An Introduction to Music Therapy Theory and Practice-Third Edition: The Music Therapy Treatment Process. Silver Spring, Maryland. pg. 460-468

[4]. Deka, Dr. Ankur. “Inner Power Of Music And Music Therapy”. Efi-news.com. Retrieved 23 April 2012.

[5]. Davis, Gfeller, Thaut (2008). An Introduction to Music Therapy Theory and Practice-Third Edition: The Music Therapy Treatment Process. Silver Spring, Maryland. pg. 469-473.

[6]. Davis, Gfeller, Thaut (2008). An Introduction to Music Therapy Theory and Practice-Third Edition: The Music Therapy Treatment Process. Silver Spring, Maryland. pg. 475.

[7]. Davis, Gfeller, Thaut, (2008). An Introduction to Music Therapy Theory and Practice-Third Edition: The Music Therapy Treatment Process. Silver Spring, Maryland. pg. 475.

[8]. Roth, Edward. “Neurologic Music Therapy” (PDF). Academy of Neurologica Music Therapists Western Michigan University. Retrieved 19 April 2011.

[53]. Misic, P.; Arandjelovic, D.; Stanojkovic, S.; Vladejic, S.; Mladenovic, J. (2010). “Music Therapy”. European Psychiatry 1 (25): 839.

[105]. Howells, John G.; Osborn, M. Livia (1984). A reference companion to the history of abnormal psychology. Greenwood Press. ISBN 978-0-313-24261-8. Retrieved 21 April 2013.

[106]. Antrim, Doron K. (2006). “Music Therapy”. The Musical Quarterly 30 (4): 409. doi:10.1093/mq/xxx.4.409.

[107]. Antrim, Doron K. (2006). “Music Therapy”. The Musical Quarterly 30 (4): 410. doi:10.1093/mq/xxx.4.409.

[108]. Haque, Amber (2004). “Psychology from Islamic Perspective: Contributions of Early Muslim Scholars and Challenges to Contemporary Muslim Psychologists”. Journal of Religion and Health 43 (4): 357–377 [363]. doi:10.1007/s10943-004-4302-z.

[109]. cf. The Anatomy of Melancholy, Robert Burton, subsection 3, on and after line 3480, “Music a Remedy”: “But to leave all declamatory speeches in praise [3481]of divine music, I will confine myself to my proper subject: besides that excellent power it hath to expel many other diseases, it is a sovereign remedy against [3482] despair and melancholy, and will drive away the devil himself. Canus, a Rhodian fiddler, in [3483] Philostratus, when Apollonius was inquisitive to know what he could do with his pipe, told him, ‘That he would make a melancholy man merry, and him that was merry much merrier than before, a lover more enamoured, a religious man more devout.’ Ismenias the Theban, [3484] Chiron the centaur, is said to have cured this and many other diseases by music alone: as now they do those, saith [3485] Bodine, that are troubled with St. Vitus’s Bedlam dance.”

[110]. “Humanities are the Hormones: A Tarantella Comes to Newfoundland. What should we do about it?” by Dr. John Crellin, MUNMED, newsletter of the Faculty of Medicine, Memorial University of Newfoundland, 1996.

[111]. Aung, Steven K.H.; Lee, Mathew H.M. (2004). “Music, Sounds, Medicine, and Meditation: An Integrative Approach to the Healing Arts”. Alternative & Complementary Therapies 10 (5): 266–270. doi:10.1089/act.2004.10.266.

[112]. Degmečić, Dunja; Požgain, Ivan; Filaković, Pavo (2005). “Music as Therapy”. International Review of the Aesthetics and Sociology of Music 36 (2): 290.