Music Therapy: Literature Review



Music Therapy: Literature Review

Literature Review

Music therapy has been gaining immense recognition as a means of treatment with numerous researches and voluminous amount of literature focusing on the domain. It is being recognized as a critical treatment factor in the provision of effective palliative care, the use of which is consistently increasing. Considering palliative care and role of music in its provision, it is first important to understand that palliative care is growing among patients, which predominantly focuses upon normalizing the process of death rather than accelerating or postponing it. This increased requirement of palliative care by the patients effectively emphasizes upon the significance of the music therapy.

Palliative care is basically an active form of care focusing on patients who are suffering from progressive and advanced level of illness, so as to minimize their pain and other illness related conditions while providing spiritual, psychological and social support. Thus palliative care is predominantly focused on ensuring and maintaining quality of life for patients suffering from progressive diseases (Hilliard, 2004, pp. 106). This triggers the need for the interdisciplinary team and with the developments pertaining to the holistic approach, inclusion of music has been considered as to be included in contemporary concepts belonging to palliative care.

Palliative care is now recognized internationally and music therapy has now successfully been added to the multidisciplinary team running palliative care services. Therapeutic use of music can easily be found in numerous cultures though it emerged as a professional discipline in the 1950's. It extended to the domain of palliative care in 1978, prior to which it was experimented on people suffering from learning difficulties and mental illnesses (O'Kelly & Koffman, 2007, pp. 238). Munro and Mount pioneered the use of music therapy in palliative care through employing receptive as well as re-creative methods to trigger relaxation and to help subjects in attaining expressive power.

Subsequently, techniques such as musical improvisation, environmental approaches and song-writing started to emerge as a result of the efforts put in by music therapists. Currently, the focus is on the entire domain of palliative care, treating patients suffering from AIDS, advanced cancer, multiple sclerosis, brain impairments which include children as well as adolescents in addition to working in home-based settings for palliative care (Skrbina, Simunovic, Santek & Njegovan-Zvonarevic, 2011, pp. 419). Effectiveness of this music therapy pertaining to palliative care has largely been seen to be USA based as indicated by empirical studies.

Systematic review of a research undertaken by Hilliard indicated that music therapy is effective in reducing pain, improving mood as well as reducing fatigue. It is also found to provide the patients with relaxation, comfort as well as increasing quality of life through the provision of increased spirituality. In addition to that systematic review, numerous qualitative studies have pointed towards some of the significant benefits of the use of music as therapeutic device. An Australian study focusing on the benefits of music therapy through the use of questionnaires for data collection; which sampled patients, visitors ...