What Is Music Therapy Essay

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Music Therapy
Music therapy is the use of music as a tool to achieve some therapeutic non-musical goal. Music therapists often work with elderly patients in nursing homes or in school setting helping children learn especially when the child has some kind of disorder that interferes with their learning. Another place that music therapy is used is for pain management on people who have chronic pain or someone who just went through an accident or surgery.
Music therapy is mainly used as a form of distraction from pain. People dedicate their brain to the music or to the interaction that are being asked to do. By using music that both interests the patient and having well thought out interaction with the patient, the therapist will take their …show more content…

While using music therapy as a distraction is beneficial, it does not help someone work through the pain that they will have to a long period of time to come. The focus for therapy in this situation is different. The therapist works on teaching the patient how to use music to relax. They work with them on exercises that can be done to relax to music that relaxes the patient. Music for relaxation is generally music with a fairly steady tempo, volume, and pitch. Music that has a lot of diversity generally excites rather than relaxes. It is also suggested that music with no lyrics are used for relaxing because that will not have the effect of pulling you into another time. If you were to use a song that you loved when you were fifteen years old then there would be some memory that you would start to relive and that would not be helping you to relax but distracting you. Though these are the general recommendations for music, every patient is different so you should choose music specific to them instead of sticking with a generic list of song used for …show more content…

The calming effect of music therapy can get people to stop focusing on the struggle of living with pain or about how they will be able to survive after their accident and get them thinking positively and having fun. I go through constant pain and the thought of waking up and getting through a hard day working construction is often really hard to think about and frightens me frequently. I am worried about how much trouble I am going to be in for not being able to work hard enough or fast enough. It is natural to be afraid of a major change and someone who just went through a major accident would definitely be facing some major changes. Help dealing with the anxiety that those two cases create is always something good. Music therapy can also be used in the same way to help someone who just struggles with anxiety in

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