Music & Depression
While reading some depression & anxiety links this past week, I stumbled upon information about the links between depression & music therapy. Read on if you’d like!
I’m actually on vacation so my posts have been pretty much just copies of news articles or rewrites of interesting articles.
“Massage and Music Therapy Helps Depressed Teenagers”
Massage and music therapy can alter brain patterns and offer therapeutic help for patients suffering from anxiety and depression. There are a number of clinical research studies showing the benefits of both of these therapies, and this prompted researchers at Florida Atlantic University, USA to investigate exactly how and why these therapies work so well.
The researchers monitored brain activity in depressed teenagers. It is known that EEG asymmetry, specifically greater relative right frontal activation, is associated with negative emotions and depression, and examination of depressed adults invariably shows this phenomenon. The researchers therefore decided to assess the effects of massage therapy and music therapy on frontal EEG asymmetry in thirty depressed teenagers, all showing greater relative right frontal EEG activation and symptoms of depression.
Fourteen of the teenagers were given massage therapy or and sixteen were given music therapy. EEG levels were recorded for three-minute periods before, during, and after each therapy session.
The results revealed that the frontal EEG asymmetry was significantly improved both during and after the massage and music sessions. The study demonstrates that both massage therapy and music therapy have positive effects on brain activity in depressed teenagers and indicate that these therapies should be more closely reviewed for inclusion in conventional treatment programmes.
Source: Adolescence 1999 Fall;34(135):529-34 . Massage and music therapies attenuate frontal EEG asymmetry in depressed adolescents. Jones NA, Field T fournd at The Internet Health Library 2000
The solution? Listening to music may help your depression. If you don’t already love music, you might try looking into finding some that you can “depend” or “rely” upon when you’re down.
January 16th, 2007 at 5:22 pm
Music definitely helps with depression (unless you are in such an agitated state that you can’t cope with any sound) and also with pain management. There is a lot of interesting research on both of these subjects.
Thanks for the link.