In the 1800s, Florence Nightingale realized that recreational therapy helps people heal from a wide range of conditions, both physical and mental. This discovery of the benefits of music therapy started a wave of new therapies still used today. In fact, behavioral health data supports the use of music for addictions and mental health problems. You can find healing through music therapy, too.
What Is Music Therapy?
Before trying to understand the benefits of music therapy, you must understand what this therapy includes. Many people assume you need talent or musical literacy to engage in the therapy. But that is not true.
Music therapy includes any of multiple approaches to music. These include:
- Listening to music
- Making your own music
- Writing song lyrics or tunes
- Making music with a group
For your music therapy sessions, your therapist leads you toward a goal. Such a goal may be expressing emotions, relieving stress or anxiety, improving your mood or simply enhancing your life. For these activities, you do not need any experience, knowledge, or talent.
Benefits of Music Therapy
Music improves quality of life, as well as mental and emotional wellness, according to many people participating in music for recovery. Clinical studies back up these claims of the benefits of music therapy. Some benefits for particular health problems include:
Depression
Behavioral health therapy data from 2008 showed how music helps with depression. In four of five studies that year, researchers showed how music in a therapeutic setting led to decreased depression in participants. These studies showed best results in people mixing art like painting with listening to music, as well as in those using improvised singing.
Stress
Music therapy also eases stress, as one of the 2008 studies proves. Just under half of 236 participants receiving music therapy showed improvement in their stress after 30 minutes of listening to soothing music twice each day for 14 days.
Anxiety
In 2009, behavioral health music therapy data showed that music benefits people with anxiety after heart disease diagnosis. Under the care of trained music therapists, music improved these patients’ blood pressure, heart rate, respiratory rate, and pain. In cancer patients, music was shown to reduce anxiety, too.
Benefits of music therapy for people with behavioral health problems like addiction also include improved communication. Breakthroughs often occur in music therapy sessions, as people use music as a form of expressing themselves in ways talk therapy does not succeed. This is why music therapy works very well as part of an overall treatment plan.
Finding Music Therapy for Recovery
When you seek help for addiction or other behavioral health problems, music can play a big role in your recovery. Furthermore, you simply need to find a treatment program offering music as part of a broader therapy program. For this, seek rehab treatment with individualized treatment planning and a list of therapies, such as:
- Individual counseling
- Psychotherapy
- Group therapy
- Family therapy
- Behavioral therapies, like CBT and DBT
- Recreational therapy
- Experiential therapy
Finally, through a well-developed treatment plan tailored to your needs, benefits of music therapy prove the therapy worthwhile. So whatever your behavioral health needs, consider how music helps you gain the lasting recovery you seek.