Music therapy Essay Assignment paper

Music therapy Essay Assignment paper

Music therapy Essay Assignment paper

Lilia Grabenstein Professor Lambert Hartman GWRTC 103 11 October 2012 How Does Music Therapy Affect Patient’s Psychological and Physiological Well-being? Many countries that you can travel to, have their own style of music that makes up their culture, which is incorporated into their lifestyles. Music was not only created around the world for enjoyment, but has been used as a form of comfort, a stress reliever, and a healer (“What Is Music Therapy? ”).

According to the American Cancer Society, in their Find and Support Treatment section, music therapy was developed in during World War II where it was used in US Veteran Administration hospitals to treat soldiers from suffering from shell shock (“Music Therapy”).

From a personal experience, I feel that music eases my tension, helps me focus, and relates to how I am feeling. In addition to my personal experience and connection with music, I was curious to see how music can be even more therapeutic. I am interested about the profession of music therapy as well as the effects that it has on patients and people with disabilities.

For my research, I decided to choose the question, “What effect does music therapy have on various patients’ physical and mental wellbeing? ” I wanted to examine this question more intently, because I believe that Music therapy can provide evidence for a new method of healing for people that suffer from illnesses including cancer, disease, and depression as well as mental disabilities like autism. As I started my research, I first wanted to find out what music therapy was and what type of audience it was aimed toward.

The first resource that I found to steer me in the right direction was the Music Therapy Association website where I read, “What is Music Therapy? ” This provided me with the basic definition of music therapy and how it aimed to help their patients. Music Therapy is defined as, “the clinical and evidence-based use of music interventions to accomplish individualized goals within a therapeutic relationship by a credentialed professional who has completed an approved music therapy program (“What is Music Therapy? ”). Here, I learned that the entire website is geared toward people who find it difficult to express themselves and feel strengthened by the music that the program is creating for them. For many years music therapy has been developing and helping to ease the pain of many patients ranging from various ages with illnesses and disorders. Specialized in this area, music therapists are “trained professionals who assess the well being of the physical health, communications, and functions of client needs” (“What Is Music Therapy? ). Some of their main goals are to “promote wellness, alleviate pain enhance memory, and promote physical rehabilitation” (“What Is Music Therapy? ”). The website gives you the opportunity to sign up as a Music Therapist, attend conferences for the program, and provides many stories and quotes about personal experiences with musical therapy. Although this website was beneficial to the start of my search, I knew I needed more to do more in depth research about my topic.

I decided to expand on my previous topic so I searched the LEO Library Website on the JMU page for further research. Here, I found a book called Interactive Music Therapy, where Amelia Oldfield shares her experience from traveling to a Child Development Center where she conducted a study the developmental relationship on children with Autism Spectrum Disorder and their parents. Since Oldfield specializes in studying children with ASD, I knew she would provide quality information for me to include.

For eighteen to twenty-six weeks Oldfield studied ten children and their parents by video analysis, semi-structured parent interviews, music therapy reports, and Parenting Stress Index questionnaires. After hours of recording data at the end of the study, nine out of ten parents felt the sessions proved to have a positive impact after participating in the program. The children resulted in increased levels of engagement, communication levels, playfulness, and interaction with their parents.

Parents PSI levels all lowered, but it was proven that two pairs of parents PSI levels decreased dramatically. The video analysis data was not as positive as the music report, which proved to be more helpful in the study (Oldfield 157-169). After reading this excerpt, I gained more insight into understanding how interactions, communication, and even relaxation levels can increase based on music therapy treatments. At this point in my study, I knew that I had made progress in researching he topic of music therapy and how it increased interaction of children with ASD. I knew that I had to dig even deeper if I wanted to support my question. Oldfield’s study seemed like children with ASD were increasing their connection with their parents. I wanted to learn even more about how music therapy could potentially improve autistic children’s learning methods. In my next source, Hayoung A. Lim shares a perspective of children with ASD in the classroom. In addition to my last research source, I decided to go to the library to further my research.

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I took about six books off the shelf, and one that stood out to me was Developmental Speech-Language Training Through Music for Children With Autism Spectrum Disorders, by Hayoung A. Lim, which provided me with another variation of a test on children with Autism Spectrum Disorders. In a study Lim shares, Carla Hoskins investigated sung and spoken versions of three standardized speech tests, which included a verbal test, verbal with pictures, and a sung version with guitar. This was used to see if it would produce better short-term memory.

Through multiple tests with regular verbal talk, music, and music with words, there was a significant difference in learning experience of the children in each group. It appeared to be evident that the tests with the verbal music with pictures improved short-term memory, increased communication, created more focus in the classroom. The results of this research was the cause of enjoyment in accordance to the method using music and pictures, which took away from the boring learning atmosphere compared to other methods (Lim 73-77).

After reading this excerpt, I came to the conclusion that these tests and studies on children with ASD and delayed speech development started to clarify the first part of my question about the improvement of the psychological well-being of people. This information gave me a clearer perspective of how music and learning combined makes it more exciting, especially for children to gain knowledge about certain subjects. Besides children, I wanted to understand how music could also affect adults and teens.

Another great article that I found on the LexisNexis Academic database was about how music therapy can be an “effective tool in enhancing the quality of life among cancer survivors and people suffering from chronic illnesses” (Wee). May Wong Mei-lin found the Hong Breast Cancer Foundation after she experienced breast cancer herself, where the Hong Kong Music Therapy program had professionals perform for patients. A breast cancer survivor that attended Hong Kong Breast Cancer Foundation, Pollina Ip Lai-chun, joined a program called Melody-in-Mind after experiencing depression after chemotherapy.

She stated that singing lifted her spirits and she feels that she has become “more cheerful” (Wee). In Wee’s article, she included the four types of intervention in a music therapy session: performing including singing or playing instruments, composing, improvising, and listening. In addition, Wee included some studies in her article like one that was conducted in 2009 by the University of Maryland Medical center that found that, “Alzheimer’s patients who received music therapy experienced lower levels of anxiety and depression”.

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