We’ve all felt the calming effects of our favorite songs, or the emotional stability of sitting down to play an instrument. For people who struggle with expressing their emotions through words, especially due to neurological disabilities, those effects can be extra profound.
Unfortunately, people with disabilities are more prone to mental health issues like depression compared to people without disabilities. For example, it has been found that about 30% of patients with Parkinson’s Disease show strong symptoms of depression. In addition, patients with Multiple Sclerosis (MS) have elevated lifetime prevalence rates for MDD (Major Depressive Disorder), depression, and other similar diagnoses. People with MS are estimated to have a 36% to 54% chance of having MDD, a 35.7% chance of having anxiety disorders, and a 13% chance of having Bipolar Disorder. This is in contrast with the 10% to 15% of people without disabilities having MDD and other depression-related disorders. This is in part because people with disabilities face discrimination and other forms of ableism on a daily basis. However, one thing I would definitely like to make clear: All people with disabilities are not depressed or sad. This blog aims to understand the power of music from a scientific perspective and how it can support people with disabilities from an emotional point of view.
Before we discuss a case study illustrating music’s powers, let’s talk about the science behind them. The human brain uses the same neural pathways to process pain and sadness as it does to process music. Therefore, if one is feeling down, those pathways would be processing sadness. However, if that person begins to play music, music will begin being processed by the same neural pathways, decreasing the “bandwidth” or space for sadness to be processed. This will in turn result in the person calming down and thinking less about the sadness they were previously dwelling over.
In addition, when listening to or playing music, the brain releases endorphins and dopamine. Endorphins are chemicals which cause feelings of joy and block out nerve cells that cause feelings of sadness and pain, and dopamine is a neurotransmitter that makes you feel good when it is released. Cortisol, a hormone that induces stress, levels also reduce, taking feelings of stress and anxiety away. Put together, the release of endorphins and dopamine, along with the drop in cortisol levels as a result of music, contribute to a person calming down and stop focusing on their feelings of sadness.
Let’s now take a look at a variety of data, case studies, and tables to see the benefits of music therapy across the board of neurological diseases and disabilities. Below is a table of some studies conducted on patients with a variety of neurological diseases and disabilities.
Study Author: | # of Patients: | Patient Diagnosis: | Study Description: | Frequency of Sessions: | Results |
Ashida, S. | 20 | Dementia | Playing percussion instruments and listening to songs | Five 40-minute sessions a week | Significant decrease in depression symptoms (P < 0.05) |
Pacchetti C. | 32 | Parkinson’s Disease | Relaxing music, singing, and rhythmic body movements | One 2-hr session a week for 3 months | Emotional (P < 0.0001) and motor (P < 0.034) functions improvements |
Tamplin J. | 24 | Chronic Quadriplegia | Two groups - experimental and control
Oral and respiratory exercises as well as therapeutic singing
Control group received music relaxation | 1-hr sessions three times/week for 12 weeks | Both groups showed improvements in mood (P = 0.002) Singing group showed improvements in arousal (P = 0.006), maximum phonation length (P = 0.007), and speech intensity (P = 0.028) |
Kim DS | 18 | Stroke | “Hello song and sharing of events in their lives (5 m), planned musical activities (30 m) and sharing feelings and goodbye song (5 m)” | 40-min sessions twice a week for 4 week | Depression improvements (P = 0.048) and positive anxiety trends |
Based on the results of these studies and many others, we can clearly see that playing and listening to music in fact does have a significant impact on the emotional side of people with disabilities, as it helps them express any sadness or annoyances they may be pondering over and therefore prevents/helps with mental health illnesses such as MDD, Depression, and more. Something that stood out to me was that it isn’t just the one disability that music is helping; instead, its a variety of disabilities, which illustrates that music’s impact is truly universal, and isn’t just on a particular disability. Therefore, listening to and playing music are activities that can be of great importance in the lives of people with disabilities, as the emotional comfort music provides for people with disabilities can help to prevent them from mental health illnesses which they may have some time in life.
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