Music therapy for patients with mental health issues takes place in many forms. Because music elicits mood/emotional responses ranging from pleasure and excitement to sadness and fear depending on past experiences and symbolic significance, it is a unique mode of action as therapy. This mood/feeling response, thought to originate in the limbic system, is used in music therapy to engage the patient in new cognitive patterns and mood altering exercises. These changes in mood are accompanied by physiological changes which are observable and measurable. The central and autonomic nervous system are also affected by music on cortical and subcortical levels. Thus the conclusion by Michael Thaut and Roger A. Smeltekop, contributing authors of Music Therapy in the Treatment of Adults with Mental Disorders edited by Robert F. Unkefer, that “music therapy interventions can affect the entire human personality and the multifold psychophysical interactions within the nervous system” (p.85). In addition to eliciting mood/feeling response and altering feeling states, music has the function of organizing thinking that was otherwise disordered due to its mathematically logical nature of rhythm, interval relationships in melodies, and form. Other areas that music therapy has proven particularly useful as well as measurable are in aiding interpersonal interaction, improving self-concept, reducing anxiety, and stimulating perceptual and motor activity.
Group session plans for the following eight activities which incorporate most of the goals discussed above may be viewed in detail by clicking here:
ACTIVITY: ASSERT YOURSELF
ACTIVITY: THE COPING BLUES
ACTIVITY: GETTING ALONG WITH OTHERS
ACTIVITY: COPING WITH STRESS AND ANXIETY
ACTIVITY: BASIC FEELINGS
ACTIVITY: “HELLO” SONGWRITING
ACTIVITY: LOVE YOURSELF
ACTIVITY: ACCEPTING RESPONSIBILITY
