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Ivy Lara

Professor Briones

ENGL 1302 222

3/4/2023

How Does Music Help With Phycological, Medical, and Overall State of Being?

Introduction

Music has been growing and developing for many years. It has become something that

everyone listens to and an everyday thing to someone’s ritual. Music has proven to show that it is

a vital tool in our culture and in our everyday lives. There are many genres and types of music all

over the world. Many of these genres have been proven to show results for helping people.

Overtime people have shown that music can help with many things like in the medical field,

psychologically and has shown that it can help with emotional support. Many of these findings

have a positive effect on what music can do to people who are sick, the elderly, or even getting

surgery. It can also cause emotion for example listening to sad music can be peaceful for people

or happy music can cause excitement. Overall music is a vital part in our everyday lives and can

help people all over the world.

Emotional Effects of Music

Most people like listening to upbeat and well-known music, but there is a good number of

others who love the slow and sad music like said here “people sometimes “lose themselves” in

the beautiful sounds of sad music and even enjoy listening to it” (Ai Kawakami et al. pg 1).

Music is arguably a good thing for people to enjoy and even to help with emotions, and anxiety.

This can also help with depression. Depression is a type of mental health and music has been

proven to help with the effects that it gives. “Studies have shown that it has lowered stress and
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the emotional responses that it gives. Music therapy, when added to treatment as usual, seems to

improve symptoms of depression. Music therapy seems to be beneficial also for anxiety which is

a comorbidity of depression.” (Aalbers S et al. Pg 26). This proves that emotions can be

controlled or can be helped by music. On the other hand, music can also be an effect for happy

responses in people. It can create creativity in people and help people feel happy. With happy

music, people can feel the same as people who listen to sad music. It just depends on the person

and how they think. People can be persuaded by happy music to create creative thinking or as

said here “Music listening can be easily integrated into daily life and may provide an innovative

means to facilitate creative cognition in an inexpensive and efficient way in various scientific,

educational and organizational settings” (Simone M. Ritter et al. Pg 2). This proves that happy

thinking is caused by happy music which produces cognitive thinking. Music can also bring

people to be empathetic and show emotion. The ability to put oneself in the shoes of another’s

empathy (Mareike C. Sittler et al. Pg 10). Singer use music to express themselves and this can be

a way out from the world and can be a coping mechanism. Music is a tool that people use for

their advantage and well being in this world. People all over have studied how it creates emotion

but what really happens in one’s head when listening to music. How does music work

psychologically in our brains?

The Psychological Part of Music

We as people have shown that we respond well to music. Part of that is because most

people love to hear music. It creates cognitive thinking and helps with our emotions, but one of

the main things we need to think about is how it helps us psychologically. Most of these are

usually proven by tests on people to see how it affects humans and its functions of music like

said here “Works that refer to only one single functional aspect of music include possible
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therapeutic functions for music in clinical setting” (Thomas Schäfer et al. Pg 3). There are many

functions to the psychological part of music such as social functions, emotional functions,

cognitive or self-related functions, and arousal-related functions (Thomas Schäfer et al. Pg 5).

These are functions we can use to see how music stimulates our brain. Music can also be

psychologically proven to help athletes with their game. “Many studies have shown that music

has an impact on sports performance and can improve sports performance” (Peijie Pang Pg 3-4).

It is proven to show that music helps athletes feel less anxiety and show wakefulness because

they are focused. The music stimulates the athlete and makes the less anxious and more focused

on their game rather than being with no music. Other studies have shown to help people in with

medical conditions psychologically. People with cancer for example have been proven to show

that when going through treatment listening to music can reduce pain and change their focus on

the music. It also provides them with less stress and anxiety when going through this terminal

condition. It has also been proven that music therapy has been more effective that regular therapy

and has shown better results for the cancer patients. “There are inherent elements of music —

such as rhythm and tempo, mode, pitch, timbre, melody and harmony — that are known to

influence physiological and psycho-emotional responses in humans.” (Bradt J et al. Pg 7). This

proves that music helps stimulate the brain and holds emotional responses to humans. It has

helped many people today in this world especially people suffering form medical conditions.

Music in Medical Conditions

People all over the world have been suffering from medical conditions that can be helped

by music therapy or listening to music in general. People like the elderly, have been proven to

show better signs when they listen to music before surgery. It affects their heart rate, blood

pressure and anxiety levels. When listening to music their anxiety levels were shown to be lower
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than an elderly who did not listen to music. ”Perioperative psychological and music interventions

can reduce anxiety and postoperative pain in elderly patient” (Yisha Wang et al. Pg 1101). Other

studies prove that music help people who have suffered from substance abuse. Music therapy

was found that it helps people with this problem and helps take their mind of the substance and

put it in music. “There is evidence of beneficial impact of MT/ MBI on mood, stress, self-

esteem, motivation, emotional expression, and social cohesion.” (Louisa Hohmann et al. Pg 2) It

can help with all of these effect listed above. These have been proven to help with music therapy.

Another way music has helped is by listening to music postpartum. Mothers have it hard when

they are giving birth and it’s not over after the birth because they still have pain due to their

ovaries coming back to normal. That must hurt and music has been proven to help with that.

Listening to music after giving birth can reduce anxiety and pain because it causes comfort

postpartum like said here “Mozart adagio classical music, affects reducing anxiety levels and

reducing pain intensity so that it can provide a sense of comfort to postpartum mothers.” (Diffa

Risqa Arisdiani et al. Pg 72). It can be very helpful in the medical side of things and works to

help people.

Conclusion

In conclusion music is essential for many people in this world. People find music

exciting, sad, happy and overall good for mental stimulation. It has done so much for people all

over the world like medical conditions, emotional responses and the psychological parts of

things. It is so important to have music in our lives because of the benefits it brings people.

Articles and people have tested the effects of music and how it helps people in general. It is very

popular for people to have because of how music helps every aspect of life wether you are
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feeling sown, happy or use for medical help. All over the world people use music as

entertainment but it can be used for much more and help aid people with music therapy.
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Works Cited

Aalbers, Sonja, et al. “Music Therapy for Depression.” Cochrane Database of Systematic

Reviews, vol. 2017, no. 11, 2017, pp. CD004517–CD004517,

https://doi.org/10.1002/14651858.CD004517.pub3.

Arisdiani, Diffa Risqa, et al. “Music Therapy as Nursing Intervention in Improving Postpartum

Mothers Comfort.” Media Keperawatan Indonesia, vol. 4, no. 1, 2021, pp. 72–82,

https://doi.org/10.26714/mki.4.1.2021.72-82.

Bradt, Joke, et al. “Music Interventions for Improving Psychological and Physical Outcomes in

Cancer Patients.” Cochrane Database of Systematic Reviews, vol. 2016, no. 8, 2016, pp.

CD006911–CD006911, https://doi.org/10.1002/14651858.CD006911.pub3.

Hohmann, Louisa, et al. “Effects of Music Therapy and Music-Based Interventions in the

Treatment of Substance Use Disorders: A Systematic Review.” PLoS ONE, vol. 12, no.

11, 2017, pp. e0187363–e0187363, https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0187363.

Kawakami, Ai, et al. “Sad Music Induces Pleasant Emotion.” Frontiers in Psychology, vol. 4,

2013, pp. 311–311, https://doi.org/10.3389/fpsyg.2013.00311.

Pang, Peijie. “A Method of Personal Music Psychological Recognition Based on Psychological

and Physiological Signals.” Scientific Programming, vol. 2022, 2022, pp. 1–7,

https://doi.org/10.1155/2022/8577034.

Ritter, S. .., and S. Ferguson. “Happy Creativity: Listening to Happy Music Facilitates Divergent

Thinking.” PLoS ONE, vol. 12, no. 9, 2017, pp. e0182210–e0182210,

https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0182210.

Schäfer, Thomas, et al. “The Psychological Functions of Music Listening.” Frontiers in

Psychology, vol. 4, 2013, pp. 511–511, https://doi.org/10.3389/fpsyg.2013.00511.

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Sittler, Mareike C., et al. “Is Empathy Involved in Our Emotional Response to Music? The Role

of the PRL Gene, Empathy, and Arousal in Response to Happy and Sad Music.” Psych

musicology, vol. 29, no. 1, 2019, pp. 10–21, https://doi.org/10.1037/pmu0000230.

Wang, Yisha, et al. “Perioperative Psychological and Music Interventions in Elderly Patients

Undergoing Spinal Anesthesia: Effect on Anxiety, Heart Rate Variability, and

Postoperative Pain.” Yonsei Medical Journal, vol. 55, no. 4, 2014, pp. 1101–05,

https://doi.org/10.3349/ymj.2014.55.4.1101.