Music Therapy
Do you ever use music to tap into your emotions? Do you have a playlist that you rely on to pump you up for your workout or calming songs you listen to before bed? Perhaps music leaves you feeling calmer, or happier, or even sad. Music’s power to engender an emotional response is widely known- but also thoroughly researched through evidence-based therapeutic applications.Almost every individual can attest to the power of music when it comes to emotions, but did you know that music therapy is in itself an evidence-based therapy?
The therapeutic power of music is not just limited to a mood boost but is now validated by thousands of research studies that prove its value in easing anxiety, depression, pain management, emotional release, and much more. The role of music in therapy has experienced dramatic shifts in the past decade, prompted by new research into music and brain function. But the general public isn’t aware of these findings. Creating awareness around the positive impacts of music integration provides an opportunity to offer life-changing results for the people who may need it most.
According to data collected by Mental Health in America, 1 in 5 adults experience mental illness, and cases have grown by 1.5 million since the start of Covid. In those adults with mental illness, 24% report an unmet need for treatment, and this number has not declined since 2011. There is an urgent need for education and accessibility for different types of mental health interventions in order to create an environment that caters to each individual's needs.
A 2021 research study was led by Andrew Rossetti, the supervisor of the multi-site music therapy program in radiology oncology at The Louis Armstrong Department of Music Therapy in New York. The study aimed to determine music therapy's impact on resilience in coping with the impact of cancer. Eighty-seven patients who were newly diagnosed with lung, breast or gastrointestinal cancer and were actively undergoing chemotherapy participated in the study. The patients were randomly assigned to three groups: clinical instrumental improvisation, clinical vocal improvisation and the control group. The study concluded that music therapy intervention significantly increased resilience, decreased depression scores and caused a decrease in pain levels in patients undergoing chemotherapy.
In addition to his research, Rossetti’s practice specializes in treating emotional trauma and the effects of the trauma. “Music therapy is highly effective in symptom management and psychotherapeutic processes,” Rossetti says.
With Rossetti’s help, the Louis Armstrong Department of Music Therapy and Medicine has designed dedicated protocols in medical music psychotherapy to address a myriad of issues that patients face. “These protocols are often focused on symptom management such as pain, nausea or respiratory distress and the effects of traumatic experiences encountered during treatment,” Rossetti says.
Over the past 20 years as a practitioner, Rossetti has witnessed the healing power of music in treating trauma for many of his patients. One patient that sticks out in Rossetti memory is a woman who was trapped under the rubble at Ground Zero on 9/11. Years later the same woman came to Rossetti to be treated for breast cancer. Once they began radiation treatment, they found that she was terrified to have the thermoplastic restraining device placed over her chest, due to the trauma she experienced on 9/11.
The implementation of daily music therapy helped the woman process the trauma that she had formed and relieved her fear of claustrophobia, which allowed her to successfully complete the cancer treatment.
“The reason music is successful in treating trauma is that it directly affects the vagus nerve, which in turn regulates autonomic nervous system response. It can be extremely effective as a device for implementing self-regulatory resources, which is a basic part of ‘phase-oriented approaches’ to trauma treatment,” Rossetti says.
“Although music therapy is rarely used as a stand-alone treatment, it is increasingly used in support of other types of mental health interventions”, Rossetti says. Rossetti believes that music therapy’s versatility offers benefits for people with a variety of musical experience levels as well as different mental health challenges.
Speaking to Rosesetti’s point, Aaron Windfield is a talented and successful music composer, data-scientist, and entrepreneur located in New York City. Like many people, Windfield found himself struggling mentally during the pandemic. After having difficulty finding solutions in talk therapy, Windfield began looking for alternative types of therapy that better catered to his individual needs and passions.
“I think for a lot of people, myself included, it is difficult to just sit down and open up,” Windfield said. “Right when we began, my music therapist asked me for a song that symbolized how I was currently feeling, and then we listened to that song together. After the song finished, he asked me a few questions concerning the emotions I felt during the song, and before I knew it, I found myself opening up and talking about deep parts of myself that I hadn’t before. The music created comfort, familiarity and an emotional response that was very effective for my session. I was automatically sold to the concept of music therapy after that.”
Windfield was so sold on the idea of music therapy that he and his music therapist, Chris Lambert, launched the company DoReMe Therapy in August 2021. DoReMe Therapy’s mission is to create a space for individuals to find board-certified music therapists from around the country to create accessible and personalized mental health interventions. The company is still in its beta stage, but Lambert and Windfield are hopeful that their work will increase awareness of the benefits of music therapy.
Recent brain imaging techniques support both Rossetti and Windfield’s experience. The article How Music Helps to Heal the Injured Brain was written by Micheal Thaut, a professor of music and neuroscience at Colorado State University. The article explains how the use of music in therapy for the brain has evolved rapidly as brain-imaging techniques have revealed the brain’s ability to change, and have identified the networks that music activates.
According to Thaut’s 2010 article, published by the Cerebrum Dana Foundation, the brain areas involved in music are also active in processing language, auditory perception, attention, memory, executive control and motor control. Music efficiently accesses and activates these systems and can drive complex patterns of interaction among them.
One Cincinnati nonprofit organization that is working to make these healing benefits of music more widely available in schools and hospitals around the country is Mindful Music Moments. Founded and directed by Stacy Sims, a mind-body educator, social practice artist and author, who is dedicated to sharing what she has learned from her own experience with addiction and anxiety to a life dedicated to deeply connecting with others.
Mindful Music Moment is an innovative school program combining mindfulness and music, and the True Body Project, an award-winning trauma-informed wellness program to help girls and women, men and boys connect to their best selves and each other. Mindful Music Moment’s mission is to improve the mental and emotional well-being, connectedness, and effectiveness of all citizens through arts integration, mindfulness, movement, and healing-centered practices.
“I had been working in schools for several years helping children feel safe and secure in their world, using trauma-informed mindfulness, movement and SEL tactics,” Sims says. “Over time, it was clear that more and more children at younger and younger ages were experiencing stress, trauma, anxiety, depression and suicidal ideation. After doing a 10- week, daily, in-school session with refugee children, and hearing the morning announcements each day, it occurred to me that ‘bandwidth’ could be used for a healing, soothing ritual for all. And that’s how Mindful Music began.”
Mindful Music Moments is now in more than 290 PreK-12 schools, reaching 106,000+ students in a calming and focusing ritual. Each day, students, teachers and administrators take 3-5 minutes to turn inward together using Mindful Music Moments mindfulness prompts and world-class music.
“Schools that sign up for Mindful Music receive 38 weeks or a school year length of daily Mindful Music Moments audio and print materials in a web-based or web-based, password protected portal,” Sim says. Mindful Music Moments partners with orchestras and other performing arts organizations to pair classical tunes with new music, to keep the playlist soothing and interesting. “Music meets the base of the brain in a way that cuts through the ‘noise’ of habituated thought patterns and classical music is particularly soothing to most people,” Sim says.
Wilson Elementary, one of the school systems that participate in Mindful Music Moments can attest to the success of the organization. The school counselor, Jean Bode, credits the reduction in stress rates among students to the implementation of Mindful Music Moments. “In 2014-2015, 46% of our fifth graders said they needed help handling stress; in 2017 only 17% of our fifth graders said they needed help,” Bode says. “I know that Mindful Music Moments had a direct impact on that number.”
“Based upon my research, all of the top achievers in all fields have added some type of mindfulness practice to their life,” says Sims. “I feel that if we do not change anything about how we engage with social and other media, we can’t quickly change other inequities. Mindfulness is a must for all humans.”
Sims notes that music and mindfulness are very similar in that they allow the nervous system to down regulate so that the body and mind complex can reset. Giving our body and mind time to reset has proven to promote creativity, compassion and learning in people of all ages and all mental health capacities.
“Music reaches places words sometimes fail to,” Windfield says. “Whenever I find myself struggling, I know that I can now turn on music and take the time to process those emotions. Music is a tool that is always at our fingertips, it's just a matter of learning how to use this tool to become the best version of ourselves.”
