Music Therapy Commons^™

Implications Of Theory Of Mind, Feelings Of Connectedness, Flow State Of Mind Through Active And Passive Music Improvisation Experiences, Jessica Kociba

Honors Theses

This study is an introduction examining the relationship between a performer and the audience in a musical improvisation context. Current research exploring performer-audience interaction in improvisation experiences is scant and typically framed in a purely narrative context. This study seeks to evaluate four different components of the performer and audience relationship; amount, or level, of experience with improvisation and comfort levels, flow, theory of mind, and emotional connection. A survey was generated and given to students in an improvisation class to collect results based on these four components. This study found that improvisation experience levels were low but comfort with …

Music Therapy’S Impact On Substance Abuse Recovery, Justin Bishop-Williams

Capstone Projects and Master's Theses

Music therapy has been a viable means of treatment for various medical conditions such as; treating PTSD, mental illness and even used alongside cognitive behavior therapy practices. Since the 70’s licensed therapists have been utilizing music therapy to combat the effect of addiction caused by substance abuse disorders. Addiction impacts the lives of one in ten Americans and only eleven percent seek help in forms of addiction treatment centers or 12-step-programs. With the combination of music therapy, addiction patients can discover feelings and emotions that have been suppressed through years of substance abuse. Forms of music therapy being examined for …

The Effectiveness Of Music Therapy To Reduce Agitation Among Persons With Alzheimer’S Disease, Caroline Mazon

Honors Theses

According to the Alzheimer’s Association (2016), Alzheimer’s Disease (AD) is diagnosed every 66 seconds resulting in this disease being the 6^th leading cause of death in the United States. Among other signs and symptoms, agitation is one of the most challenging symptoms that patients and caregivers must try to control using nonpharmacological therapies or prescribed pharmacological treatments. Among many professions, music therapy has been used to specifically lower the levels of agitation in AD patients. Live music, “sing a long’s”, using instruments, and listening to a song of the patients’ choice have all been shown to reduce agitation behaviors …

Relational Power, Music, And Identity: The Emotional Efficacy Of Congregational Song, Nathan Myrick

Yale Journal of Music & Religion

Relational Power, Music, and Identity: The Emotional Efficacy of Congregational Song

The power of congregational song to unify (or divide) people along various lines is well documented. Yet, how this process of uniting or dividing is accomplished has proven necessarily difficult to document. This paper examines the complex and polyvalent factors that contribute to the meaningfulness of congregational music making, seeking to offer a synthetic, conceptual framework with which to engage this often murky milieu.

Employing interdisciplinary research techniques drawn from sociology, ritual studies, and ethnomusicology, I construct a conceptual framework with which to understand the profoundly formative power of …

Experience And Enjoy Therapeutic West African Drumming, Danny S. Daniels

National Youth Advocacy & Resilience Conference

This presentation is designed to introduce the benefits of a therapeutic West African drumming program to educators and mental health professionals. Participants will engage in a basic drumming class where they will experience the academic and socio-emotional benefits of drumming while practicing an African rhythm. How to relate American School Counselor Association (ASCA) standards as well as Georgia Performance Standards (GPS) and Common Core Georgia Performance Standards (CCGPS) will be explained and demonstrated by the presentation facilitators.

Music, Healing, And Conflict: Balancing Science And Intuition, Marisa K. Massery

Capstone Collection

Music move us personally and with more meaning than any other medium in the world. In the past few decades, modern advances in neuroscience have proved via neuroimaging that musical processing involves almost every region of the brain, a task that no other stimulus can achieve. Science can show what is happening in our brain, but humans have intuitively known and utilized music for healing purposes since the beginning of humanity. This research examines the dynamics of continued scientific advancement in light of Non-Western ways of knowing. The study is an attempt to shorten the distance between music, healing and …

Women’S Perceptions Of The Usefulness Of Group Music Therapy In Addictions Recovery, Susan Gardstrom, Abigail Klemm, Kathleen M. Murphy

Department of Music Faculty Publications

This study represents our attempt to uncover aspects of group music therapy that women with addictions perceive as useful toward recovery – factors that have yet to be clearly identified in existing literature. Women in residential treatment for addictions to heroin and other substances were surveyed following group music therapy sessions involving vocal and instrumental re-creation, listening, and improvisation. Qualitative content analysis of data revealed four major findings. We learned that treatment is, in fact, seen as useful by these particular women and that Yalom’s theory provides a meaningful framework for identifying, understanding, and fostering mechanisms within the group music …

Resistances In Group Music Therapy With Women And Men With Substance Use Disorders, Susan Gardstrom, James Hiller

Department of Music Faculty Publications

In this paper, we explore client resistances in group music therapy with women and men in residential treatment for substance use disorders (SUDs). We describe how we have encountered resident resistances on women's and men's units within a gender-specific treatment facility and offer suggestions for pre-empting and addressing such resistances, offering both nonmusical and musical strategies and techniques. We emphasize a person-centered approach and an experience orientation, in which we view our primary responsibility as providing opportunities for the men and women to engage meaningfully with music, self, therapists, and other residents in order to identify problems and explore alternatives …

Examining Relationships Between Basic Emotion Perception And Musical Training In The Prosodic, Facial, And Lexical Channels Of Communication And In Music, Jamie Twaite

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

Research has suggested that intensive musical training may result in transfer effects from musical to non-musical domains. There is considerable research on perceptual and cognitive transfer effects associated with music, but, comparatively, fewer studies examined relationships between musical training and emotion processing. Preliminary findings, though equivocal, suggested that musical training is associated with enhanced perception of emotional prosody, consistent with a growing body of research demonstrating relationships between music and speech. In addition, few studies directly examined the relationship between musical training and the perception of emotions expressed in music, and no studies directly evaluated this relationship in the facial …

Music And Language Development: Traits Of Nursery Rhymes And Their Impact On Children's Language Development, Ashley Lauren Gonzalez

Music

From birth--possibly even before birth--the amount and array of external stimuli profoundly affect a child’s cognitive and linguistic development. In addition to verbal communication from parent to child, singing proves to be an integral aid to a child’s development of speech and language, allegedly due to repetitions of words and rhythms. Nursery rhymes are, from infancy, among the most commonly presented forms of musical stimulus for children. The repetitive nature of the nursery rhymes undoubtedly supports language and speech development, but various characteristics of nursery rhymes, specifically pitch interval, meter, phrase length, contour, and harmony, also contribute substantially to the …

Adjudicated Adolescents, Susan Gardstrom

Department of Music Faculty Publications

This chapter highlights music therapy practice with adjudicated adolescents, also referred to as juvenile offenders or delinquents.

In 2008 alone (the most recent year for which statistics are available), juvenile courts in the U.S. took action on more than 1.6 million petitions of delinquency. Some of these cases were dismissed; some were waived to adult, or criminal, court; still others resulted in adjudication (a determination of guilt) with subsequent dispositions of community service, restitution, fines, probation, and/or mandatory placement in treatment programs of varying levels of security (National Center for Juvenile Justice, 2009).

The Impact Of Group Music Therapy On Negative Affect Of People With Co-Occurring Substance Use Disorders And Mental Illnesses, Susan Gardstrom, Jacklyn Bartkowski, Joy Willenbrink, Wiebke S. Diestelkamp

Department of Music Faculty Publications

The purpose of this study was to explore the impact of group music therapy on levels of self-reported negative affect (NA) among men and women on a residential unit of an integrated dual diagnosis treatment program.

More specifically, we sought to determine if and to what degree engagement in composition, receptive (listening), re-creation (performing), and improvisation experiences would result in a shift—namely, a decrease—in the intensity of self-reported NA.

Participants were adults in residential treatment who had been diagnosed with co-occurring substance use disorders (SUDs) and mental illnesses (MIs), predominantly mood and anxiety disorders. Twenty group-music-therapy sessions were held on …

Women With Addictions: Music Therapy Clinical Postures And Interventions, Susan Gardstrom, Maria Carlini, Jessica Josefczyk, Amy Love

Department of Music Faculty Publications

Like men, women have been using alcohol and drugs since ancient times; yet we are just beginning to uncover important information about women's unique trajectory to and through addiction. Straussner and Brown (2002) write, “There is little or no denial left today: Women can be and are addicts at alarming rates” (p. 34). Close to 15% of the members of the American Music Therapy Association (AMTA) report working with clients who have addictions (AMTA, 2011). It is likely that some of these members work with women who struggle with addictions, and it seems feasible that some would work predominantly or …

Undergraduate Music Therapy Students’ Experiences As Clients In Short-Term Group Music Therapy, Nancy A. Jackson, Susan Gardstrom

Department of Music Faculty Publications

This report highlights a collaborative, phenomenological study undertaken by two faculty researchers from different undergraduate music therapy training programs in the Midwest. A total of nine junior and senior music therapy students from both programs (five from one, four from the other) were involved in short-term group music therapy, participating in three two-hour sessions during the course of an academic semester. Sessions were facilitated by the researchers, both of whom were board-certified music therapists.

To ensure ethical treatment, each researcher led sessions with the students from the other university, with whom they had no dual relationships. Student participants were involved …

Music Therapy Within The Context Of Psychotherapeutic Models, Mary Scovel, Susan Gardstrom

Department of Music Faculty Publications

Music therapy clinical practice occurs at various levels. Wheeler (1983) has classified the treatment of adults with mental disorders into three types: music therapy as an activity therapy; insight music therapy with re-educative goals; and insight music therapy with reconstructive goals.

Activity-based therapy is aimed at helping the client reach observable, measurable goals through various forms of music experiences. In contrast, the two remaining levels focus on facilitation of change through personal insight gained via musical experiences and verbalization about those experiences. Insight-based music therapy processes are ordinarily more intense and prolonged, in that deep emotions are evoked, and in …

The Effect Of Pre-­Meal, Vocal Re-Creative Music Therapy On Nutritional Intake Of Residents With Alzheimer’S Disease And Related Dementias: A Pilot Study, Larisa Mchugh, Susan Gardstrom, James Hiller, Megan Brewer, Wiebke S. Diestelkamp

Department of Music Faculty Publications

Singing has long been credited with a wide variety of physical, mental, and social health benefits (Hunter, 1999). Recent scientific inquiry points to the efficacy of singing toward enhanced cardiovascular and pulmonary performance (Bonilha, Onofre, Vieira, Prado, & Martinex, 2009), verbal communication (Wan, Ruber, Hohmann, & Schlaug, 2010), and immune functioning and attendant affective states (Kreutz, Bongard, Rohrmann, Hodapp, & Grebe, 2004; Kuhn, 2002; Unwin, Kenny, & Davis, 2002).

Among older adults, singing has been linked with improved mood, better quality of life, greater happiness, stress reduction, and emotional well-being (Clift et al., 2010).

In our own work, we have …

Personal Therapy For Undergraduate Music Therapy Students: A Survey Of Amta Program Coordinators, Susan Gardstrom, Nancy A. Jackson

Department of Music Faculty Publications

The primary purpose of this study was to gather information in order to understand if and how various modalities of personal therapy are employed with undergraduate music therapy students in the United States, AMTA degree program coordinators were asked about 3 therapy modalities, in particular: verbal therapy, music therapy, and expressive arts therapy (excluding music therapy).

It was predicted that less than a quarter of the respondents would indicate that personal therapy of any modality was required in their undergraduate curricula, but that a larger percentage would indicate that it was encouraged. Both hypotheses were supported, with just over 14% …

Something In The Air: Journeys Of Self-Actualization In Musical Improvisation, Heidi Ahonen, Marc Houde

Music Faculty Publications

The aim of this qualitative, abductive, and phenomenological inquiry was to develop categories based on participants' perceptions of their improvisation and listening experiences. As using improvised music in clinical music therapy is an important method, this study expanded the knowledge of and language needed to describe this very sensitive and insightful communication process. If there is something in the air—what is it and is it something significant? Research questions included: 1. What kind of process is experienced when one improvises with an unknown person in an unfamiliar musical style? 2. What is in the air during live interactive improvisation? 3. …