Good mental health is central to your overall well-being, so maintaining it should be part of the daily conversation. Music therapy can be a great tool for keeping your mental health in a good place. It has a wide range of benefits, including helping you process emotions, cope with trauma and understand grief. And as an added bonus? It can also help your physical health, particularly for those living with conditions such as autism, cancer and neurodegenerative diseases.
Below, you’ll learn about the benefits of music therapy on the mental, physical and social aspects of life. We’ll also go over the types of music therapy and how they can help anyone at any age with different conditions, regardless of one’s musical abilities.
What is music therapy and what are the benefits?
Music therapy is more than just putting on headphones and listening to your favorite songs. There’s scientific proof that music can influence mental and physical well-being. Depending on your condition, an experienced music therapist will work with you using a variety of techniques to support you when you need it most.
Music therapy can assist in improving:
- Emotional and mental health – Studies have shown that music can improve symptoms of anxiety and depression, ease agitation in older people with dementia, and help regulate and improve a person’s mood.
- Physical health – Music can result in lowered blood pressure, reduced heart rate, improved muscle relaxation, increased endorphins and a feeling of calmness overall.
- Cognitive health – A person’s ability to think, learn, remember and make decisions are all improved by music. Music therapy can help engage many areas of the brain, promoting memory of past experiences and helping to form new memories.
- Motor skills – Using instruments and writing music and lyrics can refine fine motor skills (ones that use the smaller muscle groups). It can also get people to move, dance and use gross motor skills (ones that use the larger muscle groups).
- Communication skills – Music can help people more easily identify and verbally express emotions, but it can also help nonverbal people express themselves.
- Social skills – Exploring music with others fulfills our innate need for social interaction and improves self-confidence.
How music therapy works
Music therapy works by stimulating the brain and influencing brain chemistry. Guided by a board-certified and trained music therapist, it can take place in many different settings, like hospitals, schools, long-term care facilities, senior centers and correctional facilities.
Sessions can be as short or as long as you and your therapist think is beneficial, and they can take place one-on-one or in group settings. How music therapy looks is up to you and your therapist, your individual needs and the goals you’d like to accomplish in each session.
What happens during a music therapy session
At your first session, your music therapist probably won’t dive right into music. Instead, they’ll take some time to learn about you, your needs, your goals and what you expect to get out of music therapy. They will then determine what types of musical experiences will work for your sessions based on what they learn about you.
Your sessions may include:
- Dancing
- Listening to music and discussing its meaning
- Playing instruments
- Reading music
- Singing
- Writing music or lyrics
It’s possible you may see your therapist just once, like in a hospital setting, or your therapist may determine that multiple sessions would be best for you. Your therapist may also assign you music therapy “homework” outside of your scheduled therapy times. Whatever your therapy looks like, the aim is that you achieve positive mental and physical outcomes and reach your goals.
The types of music therapy
There are a lot of ways to do music therapy, but music therapists typically use these four main approaches:
- Receptive – This is when you listen to music that your therapist plays and respond to it. This can be done with your own music composition, dancing or discussion about the music. Receptive music therapy can help with mood disorders like anxiety, but it’s also very helpful for people who have brain injuries and brain disorders. And dancing is a great way to get your heart rate up to improve your physical health.
- Recreational – This is where you “recreate” the music your therapist plays, through singing or song instrumentals. It’s helpful for refining motor skills, which benefits people with developmental issues. And it causes you to think, which helps your cognitive health.
- Improvisational – You’ll create spontaneous songs with music and lyrics, which your therapist will use to express how you’re feeling. It’s usually used to improve cognitive health and for tackling issues that you may not feel comfortable speaking about directly.
- Compositional – You will compose music with the assistance of your music therapist. This can be through either writing lyrics or melodies, or both. Studies have shown that this type of music therapy is most beneficial for helping with mental and emotional health, and for improving fine motor, communication and social skills.
In general, music appreciation is universal, and music is a healthy way of expressing yourself. You don’t have to be skilled vocally or at an instrument to enjoy it. There are tons of mental and physical advantages, and it can be beneficial for everyone – babies, children and adults alike.
The link between music therapy and autism spectrum disorder (ASD)
The fact that music therapy has been shown to be beneficial for people with ASD makes sense. After all, the autism spectrum is vast and varied, and music therapy isn’t a one-size-fits-all approach.
For people with ASD, music can help engage different areas of the brain. Plus, music therapy helps provide a nonthreatening setting between people and their environment, facilitates learning, helps regulate moods, and can help people identify and express emotions. Music therapy can also help people with autism improve their:
- Communication skills – Sometimes, people with ASD have delays in speech production or don’t speak at all. This is where music can help. Music can help people with limited or no verbal language express themselves through playing music and movement through dance.
- Social skills – Besides learning to express themselves physically and even verbally through music, people on the autism spectrum can also use music to help express themselves in more appropriate ways and at appropriate times. Music therapy involves taking turns and learning social cues, and it can give a sense of belonging, which is important in social situations.
- Auditory and sensory processing – Many people with ASD have difficulty processing auditory information. This means that it can be difficult to understand words and sounds, or that they might be overwhelmed by loud noises. People with ASD also tend to have more difficulty with sensory processing, meaning they’re a little more sensitive to touch and movement than is typical. Music therapy can help with both by using quiet and gentle music, through use of headphones, by incorporating muffled instruments, and through one-on-one sessions that aren’t overwhelming.
Music can assist with learning, development and communication in children
Music therapy can benefit people of all ages, but babies and young children in particular typically respond very well to it.
It’s helpful for their cognitive development, specifically with speech and language skills, and improving fine and gross motor skills through dancing and using instruments. Group music therapy sessions are great for children who are developing their social skills and learning to play and work in groups. And music can fine-tune children’s attention to detail when they learn musical notes, instruments and lyrics.
How music therapy can help with neurological disorders
Music therapy has been used to treat neurological disorders, with proven benefits. In addition to decreased symptoms of depression, it can decrease the anxiety and agitation that sometimes accompany neurological disorders.
Music therapy can also help decrease the need for medication; increase alertness, cognition and memory recall; and improve socialization, appetite and sleep. Conditions that can benefit from music therapy include:
Music therapy in hospice and palliative care
The goal of hospice and palliative care is to improve quality of life and minimize pain while treating symptoms, and music therapy can be an effective approach for addressing those needs in most patients. In fact, it may be just the ticket to break through to a person who hasn’t responded to other treatments.
It’s helpful for patients who don’t have a lot of social opportunities and for those that have communication problems due to their illness or impairment, and it can help calm people in memory care.
It can also decrease anxiety, help with pain management, reduce blood pressure and provide overall comfort when patients need it most.
Music can benefit your mental health
Listening to music has been proven to release endorphins, which are chemicals in the brain that can reduce pain and stress, and improve your mood. This can help improve the symptoms of mental health disorders like anxiety and depression, and increase feelings of well-being.
Music and movement can also help people diagnosed with eating disorders by allowing them to express their feelings in different ways, both verbal and nonverbal. It can also help increase awareness and acceptance of the body and improve emotional intelligence overall, so you can face things head on and heal.
Managing your pain with music
Music can help with neuroplasticity, which is the brain’s ability to rewire itself to deal with pain. It can help reduce pain, decrease pain interference in everyday life and take attention away from your pain during:
- Addiction management
- Cancer management
- Medical procedures
- Short-term health conditions
- Chronic health conditions
How to learn more about music therapy
Music can help many conditions. If you think you or a loved one might benefit from music therapy, ask your care team about where to start.
At HealthPartners, we have music therapists that provide both inpatient and outpatient music therapy for a range of conditions, including Parkinson’s disease, cancer, and mental and behavioral health. Music therapy is also available to patients who’ve entered hospice care.
If you’re not a HealthPartners patient, check out musictherapy.org for more information.
