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What is Music Therapy? (pt. 1)

Have you ever feel really tired and depressed after a hard day of work and you just want to go home, when your phone's Bluetooth connects with your car and your favorite song starts to play, and you suddenly you feel as though your mood has been lifted and you become less tired or let's face it, downright sad. At this point, we can all attest to the power of music.


Did you know that music therapy is itself an evidence-based therapy?

Music Therapy is defined as 'an interpersonal process in which the therapist uses music and all of its facets to help patients to improve, restore or maintain health' (Maratos, Gold, Wang & Crawford, 2008) and later was given an alternative definition as 'a systematic process of intervention wherein the therapist helps the client to promote health, using musical experiences and the relationships that develop through them as dynamic forces of change' (Gerestegger, Elefant, Mössler & Gold, 2014).

Not to be confused with 'music medicine' - which is music interventions delivered by medical experts or healthcare professionals (Bradt and Dileo, 2010), music therapy is much complicated (Bruscia, 1991).

Koelsch (2009) said that there are five factors that contribute to the effects of music therapy, which are:

Modulation of Attention

Music can grab people's attention and distract them from stimuli that may lead them to feel negative experiences (like worry, anxiety, pain, etc.). This may also explain the anxiety and pain-reducing effects of listening to music during medical procedures (ex: surgeons listening to classical music while doing an important operation).

Modulation of Emotion

Studies have shown that listening to music regulates the activity of the brain regions that are involved in the initiation, generation, maintenance, termination, and modulation of emotions.

Modulation of Cognition

Since music is related to memory process (such as encoding, storage, and decoding of musical information and events related to musical experiences), it is also involved in the analysis of musical syntax and meaning.

Modulation of Behavior

Music can evoke and condition behaviors such as the movement patterns involved in walking, speaking and grasping.

Modulation of Communication

Music can be a means of communication, and therefore plays a key role in relationships, as suggested in the definition of music therapy.

To close this post, the power of music has been apparent since the earliest days of humankind. However, the world wars of the 20th century, music therapy prefigured the beginning of a powerful new profession. And since then, various types of methods of music therapy have been developed, and music therapy has been practiced in a variety of settings with far-reaching benefits.

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