Music Therapy Goals

Growing up, I had passions and goals that I aspired to achieve. Desires like graduating from high school, attending the perfect college, and choosing the ideal major that would make me happy. Senior year in high school, I didn’t have the slightest clue as to what I wanted to do, much less what college I wanted to attend. When the time for picking a degree and a college came around, I found myself having my parents call all the shots. It wasn’t until after I officially left for Valdosta State University that I figured out that I wanted to get my bachelors degree in music therapy. At this point, when I finally had an idea of what I wanted to do, tragedy struck when I went to claim this major my school didn’t even offer. After jumping to the internet

In this therapy, the therapist typically uses techniques in music, beats, improvisation, and rhythms to elicit behavioral changes in a patient. While music therapy is not a popular approach, according to the article Exploring the Mechanisms in Music Therapy, the field music therapy formally began around World War I. After World War I, professional and amateur musicians played for veterans who had suffered physical and emotional trauma as a result of war ( Stegemöller, 2017). This information is essential because although music therapy has been around since World War I, the science behind this therapy is still discussed today.There are a lot of arguments that claim that music therapy is not a sufficient treatment over traditional therapies such as counseling, cognitive behavioral therapy, and drug therapy. What sets music therapy apart from other therapies is that in music therapy a deep emotional bond is created when people make music together. Not only that, but when a patient makes music with a music therapist a sense of hope and togetherness is brought to

In the book “Music and Emotions,” Bunt and Pavlicevic state that these methods are useful because the procedures allow for people of different backgrounds to come to music therapy and make connections between their emotions and the music. In their chapter Music and Emotions: Perspectives from Music Therapy, the two writers describe the active approach as “a method in which the patient is encouraged to show emotions by forming musical gestures and structures (Bunt and Pavlicevic).” This method can usually be found in improvisational music therapy, which is when a music therapist will make up songs on the fly using an instrument, words, or even both. During this type of session, sometimes the patient will join in causing the roles of composer and performer to merge. Similarly, in the receptive approach, various emotions can be brought to life while listening to live music played by the therapist or on a recording (Bunt and Pavlicevic). In the collaborative approach, the parent or guardian of the patient will typically communicate with the music therapist throughout the treatment to help the patient obtain their clinical objectives. This approach is necessary because it combines the viewpoints of the music therapist, the patient, and the guardian altogether(Schwartzberg and Silverman, 2017) . Reconciling these viewpoints