Music Therapy is a complex form of treatment that is used to help alleviate disabilities.  Over the past couple of years, scientists have been trying to prove that music therapy is not effective and will be ineffective if not accompanied by another form of therapy.  This resulted in patients of music therapy not being able to receive the same amount of treatment and cuts in the funding for music therapy.  Studies that prove music has been proven to affect the mood and even alter the heart rate of the listener serve as the base for finding a way to make this into a way to help people.  Music therapy is especially beneficial to patients who suffer from severe mood swings, depression, and anger management, also cheerful music has been proven to give benefits other than making people happy.  While these benefits are known to be linked directly to religious listening to music, some people believe that it causes more harm to the patient than it does benefit. This is because of the release of certain chemicals to the brain when certain soundwaves are heard, these chemicals that are released to the brain are addictive.  This can cause addictive behaviors and abnormal side effects for some patients.  Doctors use this to avoid funding for music therapy which makes it harder for patients to receive proper or frequent treatment.  Music therapy serves as an efficient, effective form of treatment, and can be used as a substitute for other forms of psychiatric treatment.  

Music therapy has three different categories: active therapy, reeducative therapy, and reconstructive therapy.  Each form of therapy is different and the psychiatrist decides how the patient should be treated per their symptoms.  Wheeler states that, “The music experience is generally used as a stimulus for verbalization, with verbal processing which leads to insight, which can help the client to change his behavior” (Wheeler).  Wheelers research on how music therapy can cause a change in behavior, helps prove that music can also alter the mood of listeners.  This is often the same effect that psychiatrists try to achieve with certain medicines and other forms of treatment.  Wheeler believes that, “Music therapy has primarily provided a successful alternative method to traditional instructive methods and the music therapist has had an important role in teaching objectives identified as important to the individual” (Wheeler). The effectiveness of music therapy is completely reliant on the therapist, and their ability to personalize the experience for each patient.  Increasing funding to these programs would ultimately benefit patients because there would be more affordability for more education for therapists, as well as more therapists.  Music therapy has been proven to help retain information and increase brain productivity, this was discovered in recent studies by Wheeler.  This can be beneficial for psychiatric disabilities like ADHD and can often deter the need for medicine.  

Some arguments against music therapy try to make claims stating that not all forms of music can affect mood, only happy music can make you happy, and sad music can make you sad.  However, Doctor Boothby found out that, “Even sad music can lift your mood, it can boost happiness and reduce anxiety” (Boothby).  Sad music can be attached to memories in your past that can sometimes be happy memories.  With this being the case, sad music can sometimes cause patients to have uplifted emotions, even though the song is intended to do the opposite.  Studies say that patients who had to undergo surgery, felt less pain and experienced less feeling of anxiety during the procedure, than patients that did not.  Even though studies like this one, show the success of music therapy funding is still short.  This makes it nearly impossible to receive music therapy treatment before surgery because it is not provided at many hospitals.  Instead more expensive medical treatments are used to subdue the patient and can have unwanted side effects.  As well as doing research on how music can be beneficial for forms of surgery Doctor Boothby did a study on the effects of music therapy as a solo treatment, just to see how music affected a normal patient.  He found that, “Music is a valid therapy to potentially reduce depression and anxiety, as well as to improve mood, self-esteem and quality of life” (Boothby).  This could cut back on the use of medicine for depression and anxiety.  Both of which are known to have negative, sometimes fatal side effects, along with being expensive and hard to access.  Music therapy could be the answer to treating depression and anxiety without any long-term side effects.

Other research supports claims made by others concerning how effective music therapy is, and what it can be used for solely.  Professor Raglio concluded that, “Most studies supported that effectiveness of musical interventions in improving mood, depression, quality of life, functional recovery and neuro-motor performances” (Raglio).  In a broad sense, music improves the speed and development of the brain.  Not only this but the use of music as therapy is proven to be less expensive, non-invasive, and has no adverse side effects.  This puts it in competition with medical treatments that over the years we have been developing to cure some psychiatric disorders.  Most cases of depression derive from some sort of stress or high levels of anxiety.  If music therapy can slow down a patient’s heart rate to calm them down, then it would prevent them from becoming anxious.  In the long run eliminating the possibility of that anxiety turning into a depressive disorder.  A study done in England shows that 54.1% of patients who went to music therapy came out feeling less anxious, more relaxed, and more focused.  Raglio’s conclusion sounds like mine, “Due to possible side effects of pharmacological treatment of depressive syndromes following neurological disease, music and music therapy may represent a valid support in reducing depressive symptoms, improving mood and adherence to treatment while contributing to the functional recovery of the patient at the same time” (Raglio).  This statement made by Raglio is what formed my research question, because at first I did not agree with this claim.  That music itself can serve as a beneficial form of therapy for psychiatric patients.  Then after completing research on the topic I came to a similar conclusion.   

The counter argument that the brain and music are completely unrelated has also been made by some doctors.  Some people believe that music is only a product of a feeling, for instance someone listens to sad music because of them already being sad.  However, Doctor Nizamie did a study believes that, “Brain, mind, and music are remarkably related to each other, music has a strong impact on psychiatry.  With the advent of music therapy, as an effective form of alternative therapy in treating major psychiatric condition” (Nizamie).  Doctor Nizamie understood that music causes an emotional reaction but realized there is still the question of what music causes what reaction.  In the table displayed below are the doctor’s results in her experiment.  She found out that a certain type of music does not necessarily cause a certain reaction to every person.  Any musical parameter can affect any emotional parameter.  (Nizame) The only consistent evidence that Nizame found was that soft, slow, non-lyrical music significantly decreases blood pressure, heart rate, respiration rate, and oxygen saturation in the body.  Combined this has been proven to alter the pain perception of the listener. Which can be used for Musical Therapy, physical therapy, and even forms of surgery if hospitals allowed patients to listen to music during surgery.  Playing classical music could benefit the patient, pain reduction, and the surgeon, by increasing brain productivity.  Through years of research Nizame concluded that music releases chemicals to the brain of the listener, a chemical known as dopamine.  A student doing research at UCLA found a similar hypothesis in that music can have associative qualities because certain genres of music can trigger uncomfortable emotions in a person, as well as being able to trigger happy feelings in a different person (Johnson).  This is important because for music therapy to be effective to psychiatrist must create a program that satisfies the patient.  However, if the music upsets the patient it can be related to causing flashbacks.  Johnson also found that music can be quite addictive, which brings to question if music therapy is even worth it.  Is it worth alleviating one problem and causing another?  

A very recent discovery tells us exactly what makes music so addictive and why someone could become addicted to treatment involving the use of music.  Professor Levitin who works at McGill University discovered that music is related to the opioid system.  Which happens to be the most addictive system in the brain.  The opioid system is the system of the body that is related to pleasure in the nervous system.  Stimulating the opioid system can occur from several activities ranging from sex, to drugs (Levitin).  The way this works is by the release of dopamine to the brain through sound waves. Professor Levitin oversaw a project where they used a medicine called naltrexone, a common medicine used to help with opioid addiction, to block off a patient’s dopamine reactors.  They then had the patient listen to their favorite song, the result was that the patients didn’t enjoy the music and didn’t want to sing along.  Research conducted to prove that music could contain the same effect on the brain as a drug would prove that music could have a form of addictive property.  However, this is not denying the fact that music therapy is an effective form of therapy, it just means the music therapist must know the limits of the patient and can work within those limits.  The likelihood of this happening with untrained psychiatrists that are products of underfunded training is highly unlikely.  Research shows that most like other forms of rare treatment, like cancer treatment, music therapy receives most of its funding through donations made through large organizations.  Organizations like The Mockingbird Foundation. 

The Mockingbird Foundation was founded on the belief that music therapy is especially effective in children.  Over the years they have realized that it can be beneficial in all age groups and are coming up with ways to expand their funding to hospitals and nursing homes.  They release grants upon three circumstances, competition, emergency and tour-based and only tend to give these grants to psychiatrists that are directly involved with their patients.  The foundation recognizes the success of music therapy as an additive therapy however their founder believes, “We tend to favor applicants who recognize music education for its own sake” (Best).  What can be taken from this is that the organization wants to fund people who believe purely in the healing properties of music and don’t want to give patients music therapy in addition to another form of therapy that could create fluctuating results.  Foundations like these receive yearly inquiries for up to $1.4 million, but can unfortunately only support up to one percent of them, which is around forty thousand.  Nationwide this is not nearly enough money to grant enough support to the music therapy program where any large breakthroughs could be guaranteed.  With these statistics, how does a foundation like this expect to expand to hospitals and other large scale operations?  At the end of the funding page they leave the reader with a quote from Nietzsche, “Without music, life would be a mistake” (Mockingbird).  On the foundations website, they have links to view portfolios of some of their grantees.  Which is where I found a YouTube video that simulates an interactive music therapy session.  

Hope Young, a very experienced music therapist, posted a video on YouTube outlining one of the many tools that music therapists use while handling patients dealing with symptoms of depression specifically, but also other emotional issues.  While giving the viewer an example of what a music therapy session looks like, Hope, also gives us a background of what she believes good music therapists do and how to most effectively work with patients.  She mentions the lack of psychiatrists interested in the music therapy field, and how those who are most times are inexperienced.  In her words, “The best way to get in touch with a patient is to before assuming what type of music they like, ask them and get a general idea of their comfort zone, and what kind of mood they are in” (Young).  A common misconception that most music therapists have is that a sad person is best cheered up by hearing happy music.  However, research shows that happy music when experienced by a sad person makes them more depressed.  It makes them feel abnormal and left out on top of whatever else they are already worried about.  The best way to get in communication with the patient is to match their mood with music.  Hope believes that music is the most powerful form of nonverbal communication and thinks that all valuable music therapists would agree with her (Young).  Letting music make the emotional connection with the patient instead of the therapist makes the job for the psychiatrist easier.  The patient is more likely to talk to the therapist during a music therapy session because music causes alleviation of anxiety and would allow the patient to feel more comfortable speaking with the professional.   This ultimately results in successful therapy.

Music therapy is a very powerful advance in science, it is very useful and has been proven to be just as successful as other forms of therapy just without the negative effects.  Over the years, scientists have made ground breaking discoveries leading us more and more towards finding a way to expand music therapy nationwide and have programs at every hospital and school. The importance and usefulness of music therapy has been on a steady incline ever since research done on the relation between the opioid system and the enjoyment of music.  However, funding has been declining because other forms of therapy have short term success rates.  In contrast these therapies often have negative effects on the patient’s social life, or other aspects of their personality.  This is what makes music therapy so special.  The only negative part about it is that it can become addictive.  So, if a patient is being monitored and has a professional psychiatrist leading them through the procedures of therapy they should be in safe hands.  The fact that foundations like The Mockingbird Foundation, can only support one percent of inquiries for funding is disgraceful.  People need help and this is their answer, not being able to provide people with aid because of funding just isn’t right.  
