Music therapy is an effective form of healing based on many claims that it can help people who suffered from serious brain damage. One YouTube video was posted online, entitled “The Healing Power of Music” discusses how music therapy provides healing to the victims of brain injury. In fact, it was stated that science and medical field’s attention was captured due to this new discovery.
According to the video, patients who had a brain injury also suffered from difficulty in speech and motor skills. In order to have a normal body and speech functions, the brain’s path ways must be clear in order to for the brain to function better. The power of music therapy can help these patients recover from such challenges. It can be done with the help of specially trained music therapist (PBS News Hour, youtube.com, 2012).
In addressing how humans impact the environment, it can be represented by the existence of the persons who have disabilities that enable the music therapists to perform their duties in helping these people. On the other hand, the impact of ethnicity and culture to the environment can be correlated to one’s cultural background in terms of music appreciation. For example, the 16-year old African American who suffered from brain injury is struggling with his motor skills, but was treated using his choice of music that was used in the application of music therapy.
Based on the research, it is known that the music therapy activates some of the regions of the brain and creates new pathways especially on the damaged areas of the brain. It was also stated in the video that music is now being used not only for brain injuries, but also for wide variety of illnesses, such as muscular dystrophy that weakens the muscle tissues. The person who suffers from this disease has no control of most of his body parts, but with music therapy, the patient was able to take the control back on many parts of the body using various techniques.
In terms of illness prevention and health promotion, music therapy provides opportunities to improve the patients’ health through music-driven therapy. As a result, the patients are empowered as they are able to regain their physical abilities as well as their speech abilities. Patients normally, process the music in his or her brain, which activates the new pathways towards an improved functionality of the brain.
One of the parents of the patients claimed that music helped his son with his current situation, such as setting his son’s mood and attitude towards his medical problems. Additionally, there are programs that send music therapist to the hospitals and schools for children with special needs to help the patients with their condition. This enables the expansion of the use of music to therapy. The video also shows that using music is not an approach towards achieving a musical objective, but it is used to attain non-musical objectives, such as treating dementia and improving the lives of children with autism. Most of times, these patients are having a hard time to say words, but can do it through singing.
Another research was presented in the video showing that music can support healing in many ways. For instance a Harvard research paper shows that music help stroke patients regain speech, while some studies show that music helps improve heart and respiratory rate as well as the blood pressure. It also reduces the anxiety and pain level of many patients who suffer from leukemia. Music therapy is not just a mere act of listening to a sound, but it is an intentional use of music to address non-musical objectives.
References
PBS. (2012). The Healing Power of Music. Retrieved from https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ketz-mJ-x-Q
