Learn how to rock out for your health and head-bang the depression away.
Music therapy is a type of medical treatment that involves using music in many different ways in order to improve mood, stimulate the brain, and much more. This could involve singing, dancing, making music, or simply listening to it. Music therapy utilizes the simple pleasure we get from listening to music on a day-to-day basis in order to aid the medical healing processes of both mental and physical ailments.
Music therapy can be a great treatment for conditions like Alzheimer's, substance abuse, anxiety, and other mental illnesses. It can also be a particularly good treatment for depression. In this post, we’ll explore the fascinating ways that music therapy and related treatments can help combat depression. We’ll also look at how you can utilize music therapy for mental health problems without any of the medical bills.
The main facet of music therapy is helping people feel better by enjoying music-related activities. Just enjoying music may not seem like a significant activity, but even just listening to songs you enjoy on your way to work or school in the morning can improve your health. But how?
The science is that listening to music you enjoy can actually activate your brain’s reward system. When you feel the need to dance and sing, that’s your brain releasing dopamine, the reward hormone, and making you feel like you’ve just done something great. Music enjoyment can also make your brain release serotonin, the happiness hormone, increasing the feeling of happiness you receive from the music.
The average music therapy session involves discussing one’s feelings among like-minded individuals and then learning to channel these feelings into catharsis by dancing, singing, creating music, and other feel-good activities.
Studies have shown that when using music therapy to treat depression, the higher the enjoyment of the music is, the better the reward circuit in the brain is stimulated, encouraging healing.
When it comes to music therapy, emotional and physical relief can be manifested through releasing anger or sadness through music, but the main aspect of music therapy involves enjoyment. In music therapy studies and therapy sessions, there are typically separate groups undergoing different types of therapy in order to gauge how effective the therapy is for each group. One of these groups is often a high-enjoyment group that focuses on maximizing how much the patients are enjoying the experience. What studies say increases enjoyment the most is the tailoring of the music to each individual’s tastes.
Enjoyment is a huge aspect of music therapy that contributes significantly to the healing process. In terms of depression, enjoyment has been found to be the most effective way music therapy helps heal the mind. But how exactly does music therapy treat depression in the first place?
Depression is a mental disorder that most often causes frequent feelings of sadness and lack of interest. Other symptoms of depression include irritability, struggling to complete basic tasks, and the persistence of negative feelings no matter how hard you try to get rid of them. Depression has many other subsets like depressive personality, treatment-resistant depression, bipolar disorder, and many more.
Most forms of depression have tons of different treatments, including music therapy, but how does listening to music and playing instruments treat such a serious disorder?
Another form of treatment for depression is electroconvulsive therapy (ECT). In this procedure, a device is hooked up to the parts of the brain that are responsible for causing the negative emotions in order to neutralize them. Believe it or not, music therapy works in a similar way.
Music therapy allows certain sections of the brain to be stimulated by the experience of listening to music. But instead of targeting negative emotions, music therapy stimulates the brain's reward system in order to encourage the release of dopamine and serotonin. By participating in music therapy over time, the brain becomes better able to cultivate good moods and eventually overpower negative emotions. Rocking out really can heal you… with science!
In the previously mentioned study, music therapy was used to treat 23 patients with treatment-resistant depression whose condition was not improved by previous treatment. The study aimed to observe the effect of music on the brain, so devices were implanted in the patient’s brains to help collect data. The goal was to observe the cortical and subcortical areas of the brain specifically.
The results of this study concluded that among all forms of music therapy, the participants who were listening to their own preferred music showed the most improvement in depression symptoms. The group who listened to music that they weren’t familiar with but still enjoyed also showed surprising improvement, but not as much as those who were familiar with the enjoyed music. Only when the music was not enjoyed did the participants see no improvement. Based on these findings, it was observed that music can indeed have anti-depressive effects on the brain.
So, as long as the music is being enjoyed, it will have positive effects on the brain. These positive effects can be maximized when the music is familiar and significant to the individual.
It’s fascinating how simply listening to music can improve depression symptoms, but music therapy is not a proven cure for depression. If you’re in search of further depression treatment, please consider the following further treatment options:
If you’re not struggling with depressive disorder but still suffer from mental health issues, or if you just want to boost your mood, you can utilize music therapy too!
While music therapy is used in plenty of medical and scientific environments, music is by no means for exclusively medical use. You can utilize the very real healing effects of music in your everyday life for an improved mood and emotional catharsis. Here are some things to try!
The easiest way to utilize music science to improve your mood is to just listen to the music you enjoy! Music makes us feel good, and so incorporating music more into your life will make you feel better — it’s as simple as that! Some ways you can increase this musical mood boost are to dance and sing your heart out. A good active dance session is great for the mind and body.
Creating music is one of the main activities used in professional music therapy. Creating music allows you to express your emotions in ways that you can’t with your words. If just talking about your feelings through therapy doesn’t seem to work, then expressing your feelings through music might be worth a shot. So take up playing an instrument or singing and you might notice some improvement!
A specific way you can use music to help with mental health is to go to musical events and make great memories! If you’ve ever been to a concert before, chances are that you think of that concert every time you hear the artist’s music. When you make positive memories accompanied by music, it gives your brain one more good memory to cling to when you’re down. So if you’re able, go out with friends and dance to some music at a party, a concert, or another event. From then on, when you want to relive good memories, just pop on the songs you were listening to!
Music can be misconstrued as a simple joy in life, but while it is a joy, it is more complex than you might think. Music has power over our bodies — it has the power to change our emotions, stimulate our brains, and even heal us! This power is utilized in music therapy, and music therapy can have a particularly positive impact on people with depression. That’s right, you can indeed dance the blues away, and there’s scientific evidence to prove it!
