Music Therapy in Mental Health

To the selfless and generous people that give us hope in humanity, particularly to Claire

“Music can lift us out of depression or move us to tears - it is a remedy, a tonic, orange juice for the ear. But for many of my neurological patients, music is even more - it can provide access, even when no medication can, to movement, to speech, to life. For them, music is not a luxury, but a necessity.”
― Oliver Sacks

Suffering from any kind of mental trauma or illness is an often distressing and daunting experience. Conditions such as depression, anxiety, Post Traumatic Stress Disorder and OCD can sometimes be lifelong that they require time and patience to overcome, as sufferers will face many ups and downs, as the temptation to relapse into old habits can present themselves at any time. 

Conditions involving severe mental health issues and depression can be complex to treat and every patient will have different needs and goals to meet. A GP or doctor will often be the first point-of-call once the decision to address a specific type of mental illness has been made, but the options available to anyone wanting to recover from anxiety or depression are multifarious. Alongside conventional talking therapies and drug treatments, there are other ways and means of helping people overcome debilitating and chronic mental issues which can feel overwhelming. One of these is Music Therapy.

Music Therapy

It is not all about trips to see doctors and psychiatrists, hospitals and sharing your deepest thoughts and feelings during group sessions, while recovering these days. Creative therapies are proving themselves to be an equally effective form of treatment. The advice given in the DrugAbuse website is that the choice of treatment is important to the recovery process of an individual, whatever the type of mental illness they suffer from is. Choosing the right program should depend entirely on the person’s needs. Music therapy creates sensorimotor responses from the body. This means that both the patient’s sensory and motor capabilities are active at the same time, making it possible to tailor the treatment for each human being based on the depression and anxiety stages the patient is going trough.

Techniques such as this can also be useful for treating people who suffer from addictions, just as they can be used to treat people with other mental conditions. The most extreme end of the spectrum will see a client who will be anxious, easily upset and maybe prone to violent outbursts. Playing a series of compositions at a slow tempo with mellow characteristics, such as soft vibrations, will alter the state of the patient’s autonomic nervous system.

The ANS is a form of control system the body uses to heighten certain feelings (such as anger) as it affects a person’s heart rate, and controlling these nervous feelings; by creating a safe and secure environment the patient relaxes, like when breathing in a paper bag during a panic attack.

Using music therapy, it is possible to teach people to control anxiety. The treatment is broad and does not just involve listening exercises, but also practical sessions where the patient will be involved in playing instruments, combining music with writing and physical exercise.

“There is certainly a universal and unconscious propensity to impose a rhythm even when one hears a series of identical sounds at constant intervals... We tend to hear the sound of a digital clock, for example, as "tick-tock, tick-tock" - even though it is actually "tick tick, tick tick.” 

― Oliver Sacks, Musicophilia: Tales of Music and the Brain

Consider the above quote too. There is something to be said for the calming, distracting, repetitive action of intoning the same note over and over again, continually repeating the same sounds and phrases, or for instance, if you were playing an instrument such as the guitar, learning to play a riff, or pick – starting off slowly and first, then learning to play it faster over time. The continued action of fingers on string, coupled with the brain’s keen-ness for repetition can be very calming and distracting.

Background Research

Over the past decade there has been several attempts to understand why music therapy provides such effective results. A 2003 report, looks into the effect that drumming groups can have on an addict’s recovery process. 

The report found that drumming, as an activity, was a successful form of therapy due to the repetition involved. Concluding, drumming puts the mind into a state of relaxation, enhancing synchronization between the brain and body, putting the patient into a meditative-like state, as they concentrate solely on the task. Focusing attention on sensorimotor treatment, it's also important to provide an overall balance, taking into consideration all aspects, mentally and physically, of the patients’ well-being, while providing this kind of treatment. Enhancing the understanding of the cognitive and emotional process, is key for the patient's mental healing. 

Psychiatry today

Psychiatry is a medical specialty officially devoted to the treatment and study of mental disorders. The Discipline of Psychiatry's research focuses on the clinical, psychological and sociocultural aspects of psychiatric disorder, and medical education.

The old psychiatric institutions at the turn of the century give us the earliest look at psychiatry's barbaric practices. These institutions were basically prisons where the "insane" were kept. In this places several controversial methods where applied as an attempt to treat the different illnesses. Some of these methods include:

Trepanation is perhaps the oldest form of neurosurgery. It involves the removal of a piece of bone from the skull, and it has been performed since prehistoric times. It was practiced by several cultures such as the Ancient Egyptian one. The procedure is still performed today, for both medical and non-medical reasons. In the past the procedure was used as a treatment for afflictions ranging from simple headaches to severe mental disorders.

Lobotomy is a psychosurgical procedure in which the frontal cortical tissue is destroyed, the theory being that this leads to the uncoupling of the brain's emotional centers and the seat of intellect. They were used mainly to treat a wide range of severe disorders, including schizophrenia and clinical depression. In the 1940s and '50s, the lobotomy was performed on at least 40,000 US patients.

Electroconvulsive therapy was used mainly for severe depression, which has not responded to other treatments. For some people, it has been a life-saver; but others have found it far from helpful, and consider the risk of its potential long-term side effects to be unacceptable. It is also now most commonly used to treat mania and schizophrenia. The most important side effect of ECT is memory loss. In addition, immediately after treatment people experience drowsiness, headache and nausea, and loss of appetite. Other effects include apathy, and loss of energy.

Corpus callosotomy, used mainly for the treatment of epilepsy, consists in cutting the corpus callosum (fibers that connect the two halves of the brain). It helps the hemispheres share information, but it also contributes to the spread of seizure impulses from one side of the brain to the other. It drops the attacks in about 50%-75% of cases decreasing the risk of injury and improving life quality. Nevertheless it may cause numbness, depression and difficulty speaking among other things.

Nowadays there are new institutional configurations for doing scientific research. Some celebrate these changes but others are seriously worried about them. Currently the commercial sector invests more than 70% of all American R&D budget. In psychiatry a large part of this money is invested by Big Pharma companies. These companies spend $19 billon a year on promoting their products; nevertheless they do not always address the correct sector of the population with their advertising strategies.

One of the main mistakes made by contemporary psychiatric practices may be encouraging patients to alleviate their afflictions just by taking medication; not by having a holistic approach that might also include a change in lifestyle, playing sports and the practice of meditation.

What is mental illness, mental health, mental disorder?

A more difficult question to answer than one might think. As usual your definition depends on all or some of your point of view.

The term ‘health’ is a non-exact term used loosely in everyday speech. Equally ‘mental health’, ‘mental illness’ and ‘mental disorder’ are used with an comparable lack of precision and the latter two most often interchangeably. In addition psychiatric health/illness/disorder are used synonymously with mental health/illness/disorder. A further problem with this concept is that there is no clear cut off point between mental disorder and mental health; indeed one person’s mental health aid, might be another’ s mental disorder inducer.

The obsession Americans have for classifying and naming every single human behavior, body dysfunction, and other classifiable entities does not help the process of healing. But the most harmful misconception is that they consider that the classifications or illness do not overlap or interact with each other. This obsolet concept is the main cause of treatment failures.