Alternative and complementary treatments such as creative art, meditation, and yoga have been proposed to bridge many gaps that conventional medicine cannot. But music, because of its ubiquity in our society as well as its ease of transmission, has perhaps the greatest
potential among alternative therapies to reach people in deep and profound ways. Music matters and it heals.
Music instruction appears to accelerate brain development in young children, particularly in the areas of the brain responsible for processing sound, language development, speech perception and reading skills, according to initial results of a five-year study by USC neuroscientists.
We now know through controlled treatment outcome studies that
listening to and playing music is a potent treatment for mental health issues. 400 published scientific papers have proven the old adage that "
music is medicine."
Research demonstrates that adding music therapy to treatment improves symptoms and social functioning among
schizophrenics. Further, music therapy has demonstrated efficacy as an independent treatment for reducing
depression,
anxiety and
chronic pain.
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