How Does Music Therapy Affect Different Age Groups of Mental Health Patients?

How does it affect different age groups differentially?

One could imagine the distress that mentally ill individuals would supposedly feel on bellowing sirens and hard to decipher paramedics or medical teams gathering around to secure them on a bumpy stretcher before sending them to a bland psychiatric unit to be evaluated monotonically. Or be sent by family armed in a wheelchair with restraints to the lowest unit of the hospital where one stand-alone cot is provided in a dark basement where only one nurse can be found. Along with standard care and psychotherapy that has proven to be most effective, a new supplemental method of treatment, music therapy, has proven to be a source of true hope, positive reinforcement, and empowering feelings for mentally ill individuals. However, mental illness does not have to be limited to these settings because it occurs throughout society in classrooms, offices, boardrooms, etc. The breadth and reach of mental illness across society can seem overwhelming to an outsider looking in and to an insider, a barrier that seems too high to reach because of how it is perceived.

Different age groups of individuals with mental illness respond differently to music therapy treatment. For example when a music therapist is given the responsibility to treat elementary and middle school aged children with mood disorders, she/he starts to decisively make changes on their curriculum. The students start to question their education and conflict arises between the educator and the student. Music therapists are given the challenge to show how the students can view music therapy as a positive outlet for their emotions. To show them how to cope better and enjoy a better quality of life with positive psychology; and to provide a positive psychology oriented music activity-based mental health education curriculum, which is shown to be well suited for them (1).

Adolescents with mental health issues see music therapy as kind of a saving light, using music as a source for their recovery and speculating, evaluating and stating that it is a critical element in their recovery process (3). Music therapists who work with adolescents might work with less conflict so there is less of a story to convey with this situation. Like any other form of therapy, music therapy is an active and creative partnership between a skilled musician/clinician who can facilitate responsive therapy to meet certain goals, whether they are physiological, emotional, or psychological (4). Music provides and provokes a response, which is universal, ingrained into our evolutionary development, and leads to changes in emotions and movement (5). Adults with acute mental illness set in mental health settings seek to have more meaningful associations with clinicians and therefore, more compliance is met between music therapists and adults. There is a greater degree of transparency and maturity that allows for greater benefits as well. In a recent study of a two-group cluster-randomized design to investigate the effects of recorded music on adults in an outpatient mental health clinic, music therapy interventions had a significant effect on participant's satisfaction in life than the control group (6). For adults just above adolescence at post-secondary education, music therapy intervention with their mental health in terms of more creative aspects demonstrated a significant improvement in feelings of loneliness and improvement in quality of life (2).

Overall, the implication from these research findings shows that with increasing age people become more receptive to music therapy and understand its value and utility in promoting a better life and providing emotional safety for vulnerable individuals.

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