Generality
Music therapy is a discipline based on the use of music as an educational, rehabilitative or therapeutic tool.
Music therapy can improve the health of patients at different levels, facilitating the achievement of treatment goals. The musical experience can influence, in fact, multiple areas, such as cognitive functions, motor skills, emotional development, social skills and quality of life.
Music therapy can be applied to pregnancy, school teaching or therapy in cancer, palliative and geriatric medicine departments. Depending on the case, the methods of approach of this discipline are different and may include, for example, listening to songs, performing with instruments, free improvisation, singing, dancing or movement.
In school facilities, music therapy is generally used for educational and psychological purposes, as it can contribute to the organization of a balanced and mature personality.
Role of music in medicine
The relationship between music and the body has been an object of interest since ancient times and, with the development of modern medicine, we have tried to deepen the healing potential of listening or the production of melodies, using increasingly refined means (neuroscience).
Over time, the beneficial effects of music have been studied and confirmed, both on the cognitive and on the physiological functions of man; one of the objectives of these investigations was to indicate which diseases could benefit from the musical experience.
Today, it is known that the discipline can be successfully associated with psychiatric therapies : listening and singing can reduce, for example, the symptoms of schizophrenia and control the states of agitation associated with dementia, improving patients' quality of life and of their family members.
Some scientific results indicate that music therapy can help children with autism spectrum disorders, improving their skills in social interaction, in verbal communication and in starting targeted behaviors.
Music therapy can also be useful in diseases that cause conditions of marginalization (eg aphasia, amnesia, etc.), allowing the patient to express and communicate emotions, feelings and moods through non-verbal language. Furthermore, music can be used as a tool to facilitate movement and neurological rehabilitation after a stroke .
Other studies have recorded the beneficial effects of music therapy on anxiety levels in patients with severe heart and lung disease .
Finally, music has proven effective in alleviating anxiety and pain perception, even in complex conditions, such as in patients waiting for medical procedures or surgery.
What is music therapy
Music therapy has reached a prominent position in the field of psychological interventions since the sixties.
This discipline involves the use of music, sound, rhythm and movement to facilitate and facilitate the achievement of various objectives, such as teaching, rehabilitation or pathological condition management.
Music therapy is carried out with the contribution of a qualified music therapist, who addresses a single user or a group of people in order to program useful interventions to develop or maintain cognitive, emotional, social or physical skills (such as motor coordination).
Specifically, to undertake a therapeutic journey with patients, these operators must have psychological and medical skills, as well as having experience in the field of music.
The methods of approach of the music therapist can be basically of two types:
- Active music therapy (playing): the interaction between music therapist and patient takes place through the direct production of sounds using the voice, musical instruments or simple objects;
- Receptive music therapy (listening): based on listening to music; a certain activity is attributed to the patient in the perception, imagination and elaboration of the proposed melodies.
Body-music relationship
The results of scientific research aimed at understanding on which physiological mechanisms the music intervenes, have established that this is able to influence the hypothalamic-pituitary axis and the autonomic nervous system (the same that controls other involuntary functions such as digestion and beating cardiac). Acting at these levels, the sound would be able to modulate a series of metabolic responses .
The mental well-being that is experienced while listening to a piece of music, for example, would be due to the ability of the melody to activate the neural networks related to pleasure in the brain: the notes trigger the production of endorphins, which improve mood and condition the relaxation.
More recent discoveries have demonstrated a positive role of music in the metabolic recovery from stress, in gastric and intestinal motility and in reducing the level of anxiety, with a protective effect of the cardiovascular system. In some cases, scientific studies have revealed advantages already in the womb, or since the prenatal period.
Over the years, the beneficial effects on physical activity have been demonstrated: listening to music during training would help increase exercise speed and resistance to effort, improving sports performance. This is possible thanks to the stimulation of the brain region responsible for planning and executing the movements.
Beyond sports performance, scientific research shows that listening to music during exercise can help the coordination and movement of the body.
Application fields
With regards to therapy and rehabilitation, the areas of intervention of music therapy mainly concern neurology and psychiatry, with particular reference to:
- Infantile autism;
- Tourette syndrome;
- Mental delay;
- Motor disabilities;
- Alzheimer's disease and other dementias;
- Parkinson's disease;
- Stroke;
- Amnesie;
- Aphasia and similar language disorders;
- Psychosis;
- Mood disorders;
- Depressive states;
- Bipolar disorder;
- Somatoform disorders (such as chronic pain syndromes);
- Eating disorders (anorexia nervosa).
The main objectives to be pursued with music therapy include:
- Stimulate communication and allow the patient to freely express their emotions;
- Improve difficult to control behavioral disorders (such as aggression, isolation or anger);
- Reduce the use of psychotropic drugs;
- Maintain or stimulate residual abilities, improving quality of life.
Music therapy in childhood
During childhood, music is able to influence the child's cognitive, linguistic, emotional and social development, as it stimulates certain brain areas.
Learning to play an instrument, can facilitate learning, improve attention, contribute to the control of emotions and the expression of creativity.
During childhood, musical activities make it more adept at reading and recognizing words, as, playing with two hands, the visual cortices of both cerebral hemispheres are activated. Listening also offers advantages, as rhythm and melodies can have positive effects on concentration.
For these reasons, music therapy finds a useful application in the treatment of dyslexia : in several cases, children engaged in playing an instrument have shown an improvement in the correctness of reading and writing and in the tests of segmentation and phonetic fusion.
In children with Down syndrome, however, music therapy can be associated with psychomotor techniques and speech therapy. This approach allows improving the knowledge of the body, the development of perception and temporal organization, motor coordination and verbalization.
In childhood, the intervention of music therapy can also be useful in the management of autism, a disease characterized by a qualitative impairment of social interaction, which becomes evident through anomalous non-verbal behaviors, inability to develop relationships with peers appropriate to the level of development, and lack of emotional reciprocity. In these patients, the musical experience must have the objective of developing communication techniques, stimulating empathy and strengthening the expression of emotions. Therefore, music therapy allows the external world to communicate with the autistic child, favoring the beginning of an opening process.
