Mental Illness and Music Therapy

Mental Illness and Music Therapy

Mental disorders result in the change of the thinking and the behavior of an affected person. Whenever this occurs, a significant burden usually comes to those close to the patient. At times the condition would be extreme, making the patient entirely out of control while in other situations, the patient would be in a position to carry out some duties. There are usually various causes of mental disorders which dictate the type of control and treatment measures applicable to the patient. The treatment is categorized into research evidence techniques and practice techniques that most experts have been using (Arzin, 2005). Evidence-based techniques such as music therapy have not been implemented by most medical practitioners who have insisted on conventional means.

Mental health problems have become widespread predominantly among youth (Pakdeesatitwara, 2018). These disorders may be caused by physical, social, and psychological factors. Psychological factors have been attributed to most of the mental disorders. Living with a patient-facing mental disease is usually very challenging. At times the patient may get violent, hurting those around him/her while at other times, the patient may get hurt. For this reason, any family having a mental disorder patient utilizes every available resource to try to help their loved one. The conventional treatment has been segregation of the victims in psychiatric hospitals and the administration of drugs, which have not been very successful yet very expensive. Extensive research has been taking place to shift from using conventional methods to using evidence-based techniques such as music therapy to treat mental disorders. This has not been easy at all, and conflict has always existed between the conventional practitioners and the evidence-based practitioners. The evidence-based methods philosophy has believed in bringing the mentally ill patients closer to their loved ones. Music therapy has utilized songs to calm down the patients making it easier to bond them with those around them and accelerate healing.

After a long day at work, the body requires to rest. However, this is not always the case. One may be in great need to rest, but the mind keeps on processing all the occurrences of the day. Continued lack of sleep for an extended period may result in mental and physical health complications. To try and solve this, many people have opted for the use of drugs that have got long term side effects, and the body at some point may not respond to the drugs. Music therapists have carried out extensive research on the use of music to induce sleep. This technique was used in Biblical times in the Old Testament when David had to play the lyre to King Saul to help him sleep (Loewy, 2020). If this were implemented, it would result in a very cost-effective way of sleep induction and reduce the dangers associated with the use of drugs for sleep induction. In the clinical trials, music therapists have not been consulted despite them being potential solution bearers. Various categories of songs exist, and it is upon the music therapist to study the victims and determine the songs which would work best for their patients. The most important musical elements, including rhythm, melody, and harmony, must be analyzed before administration considering the age, culture, and context of the patient. Further study has been conducted in toddlers on how music would induce sleep in them. The parents were involved in the survey since the children lacked the cognitive and verbal skills required in the study (Lagasse, 2017). The results showed that music therapy helped the parents in inducing sleep to their children. In addition to inducing sleep, music therapy has also helped in improving the child-parent bond, especially when the parent is directly involved in the music therapy process.

Music can calm down mentally ill persons to allow the brain enough room to deal with the psychological issues affecting a person. Psychological problems cause most of the mental problems which finally grow into physical and health issues. Convectional means are costly, making use of drugs which have an eventual side effect. Endorsing the use of evidence-based methods such as music therapy would save a lot of money and prevent unforeseen health complications resulting from the use of mental drugs. Sleep induction drugs are beneficial for a short time but have a devastating long term effect. The use of music therapy to induce sleep in children and adults as well would be better than using drugs. Drugs should be used only when the mental disorder cannot be treated using evidence-based methods. Music therapy, particularly, has helped many people even without their knowledge. Listening to a favorite song even without prescription helps one relax, and this is very helpful to the mental and physical health (Loewy, 2020). Proper use of music therapy would be very helpful in preventing advanced psychological complications through early intervention.

In conclusion, not all music can be used to treat mental illness or induce sleep or calm down a mentally ill person. It’s upon the music therapists to understand their patients well and carefully select the best music to suit the situations. Music therapy can work best when administered early enough and whenever signs of mental illness are noticed proper diagnosis should be carried out and if the condition would be treated using Music Therapy, treatment should commence immediately. Adequate administration of music therapy can bear high fruits in solving mental health complications and should be accepted and implemented globally as an alternative mental illness treatment technique. It’s a slow process, but with time it bears fruits with no side effects. Therefore it can be concluded that music can be an effective means of treating and preventing mental illness.