How Music Therapy Can Provide Mental Health Benefits
Brian Acton
Music therapy is a research-based practice that applies music interventions to help clients achieve mental or physical goals. Music therapists can work in a variety of settings and with many types of people, ranging from people with specific physical or mental conditions to people with chronic pain.
There are many different types of musical interventions, including creating music, playing an instrument, lyric analysis, and more. There are also many different applications for music therapy, including mental health.
Here are five ways that music therapy can provide mental health benefits.
- Promoting Self-Awareness and Emotional Health
Music therapy can help improve mood and reduce symptoms of depression, anxiety, and stress. It can also help people identify what’s happening in their minds and how it’s affecting their behavior, and work through difficult moments using self-awareness. Music can also help people channel feelings of frustration or anger into creative and expressive outlets.
- Providing Coping Strategies
Coping skills that include breathing techniques, grounding exercises, relaxation, and distraction can all be aided with the help of music therapy. People can develop these skills as part of their therapy, and use these in real time when an issue, such as anger or a mental health episode, arises.
- Treating Mental Disorders
Music therapy is used to treat a variety of disorders including autism, Alzheimer’s, post-traumatic stress disorder, issues related to past trauma or crisis, substance abuse disorders and more. The methods will vary based on the nature of the issue and what the person needs, and music therapy may be used as a complement to other forms of treatment.
- Developing Social Skills
Our mental well-being can affect our interpersonal relationships with family, friends, coworkers, and people we meet throughout the day. Mental health issues may lead us to withdraw, lash out, or isolate from others. But music therapy, especially when performed in a group setting, may help us develop social skills that benefit our everyday relationships. For example, clinical studies have shown that music therapy can help children with autism develop stronger social skills including verbal and nonverbal communication, sharing and reciprocity, empathy, and more.
- Strengthening Cognitive Abilities
Music may be able to help improve cognitive abilities, including the ability to hold attention on a subject or task and focus for longer periods of time. For example, one study showed evidence that music interventions helped children improve attention control better than a video game alternative.
Sources:
https://www.musictherapy.org/about/quotes/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4550953/
