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Katie Norflus

Professor Gilchrist

2/24/17

ENC 2135-016

Research Proposal

This research paper will revolve around the question, How does music therapy help

people with mental health conditions? One possible title for this paper is: Music Therapy: A

New Frontier in Medicine and Psychology.

Music Therapy is a relatively new technique that is being implemented by music

therapists all around the country. It is a specialized technique that combines knowledge in the

fields of music, medicine, and psychology in order to help people physically, mentally, and

emotionally. I will be looking at how music therapy combines these different fields to create

effective therapy strategies and compare them to other types of therapy techniques. Key terms

that will need to be defined throughout the essay include: psychology, mental health, and music

therapy.

Music has been a passion of mine since I started playing the clarinet in sixth grade. I

experienced so many different emotions from excitement to sorrow from all the different types of

music that I had the chance to play and listen to. Music served as not only a hobby, but an outlet

for me to relieve stress and forget about the day to day struggles. It also helped me to gain a

different level of maturity, as many of the pieces that I played were upwards of ten to fifteen

minutes long, requiring me to stay completely engaged the entire time. The positive effect that

music had on me as an individual without a mental health condition made me wonder how much
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it could benefit someone in a therapeutic setting who was suffering from a disease like

depression. This led me to looking into the field of music therapy and I found that right here at

Florida State University there are multiple degrees in this field. I hope to learn how music

therapy works to help an individual. Does it stimulate a part of the brain in order to release a

neurotransmitter like serotonin that helps to produce a more positive mood or does it allow

someone to learn a skill that can help them relieve stress?

There will absolutely be some challenges that I will face as I go through the process of

writing this paper. One of them will be being able to substantially define each subcategory within

music therapy and intertwine them to show how they work together. This will be difficult

because of how broad the fields of medicine, music, and psychology are. This challenge may

also be a blessing in disguise because it provides me with a wealth of information to include in

the paper. Another challenge I may face is choosing which therapy techniques to compare music

therapy to. It is a distinct style of therapy so I dont want to pick another type of therapy that is

too far from what I am researching as a comparative element. I dont have any concerns as I

prepare to write this paper and I am excited to see what I find through my research for this

project.
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Music Therapy and its Impact on Modern Day Therapy

Music therapy is a relatively new form of medicine, compared to traditional styles, such

as pure medication or regular visits to a psychologist that are being used around the country. The

idea of music as a therapy began to emerge in the early 1900s and really started to develop into a

science in the 1940s after discovering that music helped WWII soldiers that were hospitalized

(Wheeler, 14). It is a multidisciplinary field that works to incorporate music in a therapeutic way

in order to help patients physically, mentally, and emotionally. According to the American Music

Therapy Association, [t]hrough musical involvement in the therapeutic context, clients' abilities

are strengthened and transferred to other areas of their lives. Music therapy also provides

avenues for communication that can be helpful to those who find it difficult to express

themselves in words. Music therapy has been proven to be helpful to patients with all kinds of

disorders from depression to autism to neurological disorders such as Parkinsons disease.

Its important to first look at what music therapy is composed of and at its core it is a

type of psychological therapy. Psychology is a unique field of medicine because it looks at the

how and why for a certain situation. There is a lot that is known about the field of psychology

but there is even more that hasnt been discovered yet because the brain is a difficult organ to

study. A psychologist is trained to diagnose and treat psychological disorders like depression or

obsessive compulsive disorder and they use different types of techniques such as meditation or

simply providing someone to talk to in order to help people overcome psychological disorders.

Music therapy is a new field in the world of psychology and it takes special training in

order to become certified in the field. According to the American Music Therapy Association,

The undergraduate curriculum includes coursework in music therapy, psychology, music,

biological, social and behavioral sciences, disabilities and general studiesStudents learn to
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assess the needs of clients, develop and implement treatment plans, and evaluate and document

clinical changes. These unique skills are what allows music therapists to create plans that

incorporate music into a medical setting. They are not only responsible for creating personalized

treatments for each patient, but also being able to evaluate whether or not the strategies they are

implementing are effective. This is what sets music therapy a part from a hospital hiring a

musician to play in their lobby because the music might have calming effects on the patients and

visitors, but it is not being used in a clinical fashion. The base level of education needed to

become a music therapist is a bachelors degree and just like with a normal psychologist, in order

to truly be considered well experienced its almost necessary to obtain a masters or even

doctoral degree. The first university in the United States to offer a music therapy program was

Michigan State in 1994 (Wheeler, 14). Currently there are only three schools in the entire state of

Florida that offer a music therapy program, inlcuding Florida State University.

Music has a very special and unique effect on the brain. Oliver Sacks says in his article

The Power of the Brain that [o]ne of the most dramatic effects of music's power is the induction

of trance states, which have been described by ethnomusicologists in nearly every culture.

Tranceecstatic singing and dancing, wild movements and cries, perhaps, rhythmic rocking, or

catatonia-like rigidity or immobilityinvolves both motor and gross emotional, psychic and

autonomic effects, culminating in profoundly altered states of consciousness This ability to,

in a sense, wake the person up from a catatonic state is rare and unique to music. It is what

allows music to be beneficial to patients with neurological diseases because the effect that music

has allows the patients to be able to experience stimuli that they normally wouldnt be able to

receive because of their condition. For example, patients with Parkinsons Disease can greatly

benefit from this because it gives them a structure to follow. Patients with parkinsonism, in
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whom movements tend to be incontinently fast or slow or sometimes frozen, may overcome

these disorders of timing when they are exposed to the regular tempo and rhythm of music

(Sacks, 2006). Music helps these patients to time their movements, allowing them to become

more rhythmic and precise. This can help people with Parkinsons Disease function because it

will regulate their movements giving them the ability to do every day tasks much easier than they

were able to do before.

Music also plays a strong effect on mood regulation in people of all ages due to musics

ability to causes an increase the amount of dopamine released in the brain. Dopamine is an

important neurotransmitter that regulates the reward and pleasure centers in the brain (Goldstein,

2017) and its musics ability to affect peoples mood that makes it so beneficial therapeutically.

Music Therapists are able to use this to their advantage when treating patients with mood

disorders by correlating music with the reward and pleasure centers of the brain allowing people

to correlate the musical activities that they are doing with feelings of happiness or joy. It has also

been seen to increase self esteem among individuals with mood disorders (Porter, 2016). In a

study called The Role of Music in Adolescents' Mood Regulation, it was revealed that music

helped in mood regulation because it set up an atmosphere for the listeners (Saarikallio and

Erkkila, 94). It created an atmosphere that allowed the adolescents in the study feel comfortable

and they gravitated toward positive emotions rather than negative ones. The study also revealed

that music was effective at changing their energy levels and providing thrills (Saarikallio and

Erkkila, 94). There have also been multiple studies done that reveal musics positive impact on

people suffering from depression. A group of scientists reviewed five different studies that met

their criteria and four out of five of the studies showed that music therapy in combination with

standard care, such as medication than with standard care alone (Maratos, 2008). Another study
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was done involving cancer patients that have depression and anxiety. The patients were

instructed to listen to music for 20 minutes three times a week and the results showed a

significant decrease in the levels of depression and anxiety in the people (Jasemi, 2016). This

effect that music has could be very beneficial to people who are overcoming grief or tragic life

events by allowing them to feel joy again and start to get back to a normal life.

Another effect of music therapy is its ability to help people who have difficulty

communicating, for example people with autism, because music has often been thought of as a

language in its own. Scientists are using a new technique called Auditory-Motor Mapping

Training in order to help create a link between sounds and articulatory actions (Wan, 2011). The

study that Wan and her colleagues focused on six children within the autism spectrum that had

no intelligible words. They worked with these kids for two months and had overwhelming

success. Every child showed a significant amount of improvement in their ability to speak (Wan,

2011.) This is extremely important as Wan puts it, [b]ecause these children had no or minimal

vocal output prior to treatment, the acquisition of speech sounds and word approximations

through AMMT represents a critical step in expressive language development in children with

autism. These children wouldnt have been able to effectively communicate without the help of

music. The therapy they are receiving is allowing them to express themselves in ways that some

medical professionals never thought possible. Another study was done to analyze children and

how music can help them in a group dynamic. Children ages six to nine with autism were

randomly assigned to groups that met for ten fifty minute sessions over the span of five weeks.

The results showed an improvement in joint attention with peers and eye gazing in the group that

had music therapy (LaGasse, 2014). These are also major milestones for children with autism to

accomplish and can help them in multiple ways such as being able to help them have more
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positive social interactions at school. This opens the door for more studies to be done on how

music therapy can help improve the lives of people with this disorder.

With all of these amazing milestones that music has helped the medical field achieve, its

very surprising how there can still be debates among our government about whether arts

education in public schools is worth it. There is so much untapped potential in the field of music

therapy and it starts in the youth of country. Without arts education the majority of kids will have

no exposure to musical instruments or choir and this is something that people are taking for

granted now. The arts are one of the first programs to be cut when public schools need to reduce

their budget and some schools are working around this dilemma by making art programs core

subjects (Hambek, 2016). There have been multiple studies showing how music can actually help

students in other subjects while they are in school. An essay written by Donald Hodges and

Debra OConnell revealed that, For example, using information from the National Center for

Educational Statistics, Morrison (1994) reported that on a sample size of 13,327 high school

sophomores those who participated in music reported higher grades in English, math, history,

and science than those who did not participate in music. The rational behind why music is so

beneficial to learning is still being determined, but it is widely known that music activates both

sides of the brain at the same time. This trains the brain to use both sides while engaging in one

activity increasing the amount of brain power that can be used not only while being involved in a

musical activity, but also while learning. Later in the same essay it is said that, Using records

from two area high schools, Trent (1996) determined that those high school seniors who had

participated in instrumental music programs from sixth through 12th grades scored significantly

higher on standardized tests of language arts and math than their counterparts... Since entry into
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upper level education relies heavily on standardized test scores, this is further evidence of the

benefit that music education can have for students.

There is no question that music therapy is a new and upcoming field and it is still in the

experimental stages. There is no concrete, one hundred percent certainty, that music therapy

works but that is rare to find is in the field of medicine. Each individual case is different and this

type of therapy may not work well for every person but this is also the case with other types of

medicine as well. There are new experimental drugs being released every day and there are

millions and even billions of dollars that are flooded into funding these trials without having any

idea if they will work or not. Drug companies and their sponsors take this risk in the hopes of

finding a product that works. Johnson and Johnson, a major household name, spent $17.5 billion

on sales and marketing and another $8.2 billion on research and development in 2013 (Swanson,

2015). The amount of money wasted in failed advertisement and poor marketing is astonishing

and if that money was to be put towards funding research more progress could be made. There is

no reason for there not to be just as much effort put into building the field of music therapy than

any other field of medicine. With as many positive outcomes that music has had in multiple

fields of healthcare, there is still so much that has yet to be discovered. The more widespread that

the knowledge of music therapy and its benefits become, the more it will continue to grow and

help people in unexpected ways.

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Works Cited

"American Music Therapy Association." What Is Music Therapy? American Music

Therapy Association (AMTA), n.d. Web. 08 Apr. 2017.

Goldstein, Barry. "4 Surprising Ways That Music Changes Your Brain and Influences

Your Mood." Music and the Brain: How Music Affects & Elevates Your Mood.

Conscious Lifestyle, 16 Feb. 2017. Web. 26 Feb. 2017.

Hambek, Jill. "Arts Programs in Schools Often in Danger of Being Cut." The

Washington Times. The Washington Times, 14 Mar. 2016. Web. 08 Apr. 2017.

Hodges, Donald A., and Debra S. O'Connell. "THE IMPACT OF MUSIC EDUCATION

ON ACADEMIC ACHIEVEMENT." The University of North Carolina at

Greensboro, n.d. Web. 22 Mar. 2017.

LaGasse, A. Blythe PhD, MT-BC; Effects of a Music Therapy Group Intervention on

Enhancing Social Skills in Children with Autism. J Music Ther 2014; 51 (3): 250-

275. doi: 10.1093/jmt/thu012

Jasemi, M. "The Effects of Music Therapy on Anxiety and Depression of Cancer

Patients." Indian Journal of Palliative Care. U.S. National Library of Medicine,

Oct. 2016. Web. 26 Feb. 2017.

Lifestyle, Conscious. "4 Surprising Ways That Music Changes Your Brain and Influences Your

Mood." Music and the Brain: How Music Affects & Elevates Your Mood. N.p., 28 Mar.

2017. Web. 09 Apr. 2017.

Maratos, A., C. Gold, X. Wang, and M. Crawford. "Music Therapy For

Depression." Cochrane Database of Systematic Reviews (2008): Web. 6 Apr.

2017.
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Porter, S., T. McConnell, K. McLaughlin, F. Lynn, C. Cardwell, H. J. Braiden, J. Boylan,

and V. Holmes. "Music Therapy for Children and Adolescents with Behavioural

and Emotional Problems: A Randomised Controlled Trial." Journal of Child

Psychology and Psychiatry, and Allied Disciplines. U.S. National Library of

Medicine, 27 Oct. 2016. Web. 26 Feb. 2017.

Saarikallio, S., and J. Erkkila. "The Role of Music in Adolescents Mood

Regulation."Psychology of Music (2010): 88-109. SagePub. Web. 6 Apr. 2017.

Oliver Sacks; The power of music. Brain 2006; 129 (10): 2528-2532. doi:

10.1093/brain/awl234
Swanson, Ana. "Big Pharmaceutical Companies Are Spending Far More on Marketing than

Research." The Washington Post. WP Company, 11 Feb. 2015. Web. 09 Apr. 2017.

Wan, Catherine Y., Loes Bazen, Rebecca Baars, Amanda Libenson, Lauryn Zipse,

Jennifer Zuk, Andrea Norton, and Gottfried Schlaug. "Auditory-Motor Mapping

Training as an Intervention to Facilitate Speech Output in Non-Verbal Children

with Autism: A Proof of Concept Study." PLOS ONE. Public Library of Science,

29 Sept. 2011. Web. 27 Feb. 2017.

Wheeler, Barbara L. Music Therapy Handbook. New York: Guilford, 2017. Print.