preview

Should Music Therapy Be Taught?

Better Essays

Gabriella Boccia
Mrs. Price
English III Honors
10 March 2016
Medicinal Melodies
Jodi Picoult, New York Times best-selling author of Sing You Home once said, "Music therapy, to me, is music performance without the ego. It’s not about entertainment as much as it 's about empathizing. If you can use music to slip past the pain and gather insight into the workings of someone else’s mind, you can begin to fix a problem." Music therapy is precisely that: an assuaging therapy meant to heal patients who need empathy, love, and tranquility. Patients in the neonatal intensive care unit (NICU), residents of nursing homes, or non-verbal people on the autism spectrum all can use music therapy to their advantage. Music therapy is truly beautiful to many patients, who are not the only people benefitting from this type of therapy. Therapists and family members are wholly affected by music therapy as they watch their patients or loved ones develop through the love of music. Although music therapy is not for all patients, it has wonderful perquisites for many disorders and injuries. In music therapy, there are many different exercises and methods to heal a person’s mind and body. For example, rhythm exercises are physical, but also require the patient to utilize their mind by counting, keeping time, and respecting note values. The execution of these exercises can improve fine and gross motor skills, which benefits patients who are losing these skills or trying to learn them for the first

Get Access