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Tryana Cervantes

ENGL 1302-231

Dr. Sharity Nelson

10 March 2024

Music Therapy as a Treatment for Mental Illnesses: Literature Review

The knowledge I gained during the academic research in this second writing assignment

was to know how to order my main points. When I wrote my thesis statement, I knew that the

way I mentioned my points was the way I should write my body paragraph. My thesis statement

was the following: “It is not surprising to people that music is now a reliable treatment to help

treat people suffering from fragile mental health, anxiety, children, and even for people

undergoing surgery” (Cervantes). As you can read, I would first describe the musical treatment

of people suffering from fragile mental health, then in anxiety, next in children, and finally in

people undergoing surgery. In this way I was guided in writing my paragraphs and I realized that

it was an easy task to do. Once I wrote my thesis statement, everything was already set up. So it

was just a matter of expressing what I already knew.

During the process of writing the “Annotated Bibliography,” I learned how to correctly

write MLA citations with the assistance of “RefWorks.” It is a tool provided by “Sue & Radcliffe

Killiam Library,” a digital verified library by my university. If you google your article in

Academic Google, at the bottom of the site it wil appear the word “cite,” after you click it will

appear the option of “Cite with RefWorks.” If you already have an account then, Refworks will

ask you how you would like your citations, I personally used MLA as Dr. Nelson previously

mentioned. Once I did it, the citarion was already created and I was able to copy and paste it in

my “Works Cited” (Cervantes). Therefore, thanks to this tool, I was able to make once again the
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citations of my articles and thus avod condusion and errors. An example of one of my citations

created by “RefWorks” is the following: Kwok, Sylvia YCL. "Integrating Positive Psychology

and Elements of Music Therapy to Alleviate Adolescent Anxiety." Research on Social Work

Practice, vol. 29, no. 6, 2019, pp. 664-676. Sage Journals,

https://doi.org/10.1177/1049731518773423. (Cervantes).

During the “Research Analysis' 'helped me to organize the different elements that came in

each of my articles. My articles were mainly about the musical methos in therapy, however, my

artiles had a different focus. Author Beck, et al. used usic therapy for people with a fragile

mental helath codition, unllike author Govindan, et al. whose focus was on music therapy on

children (Cervantes). This gave me ideas in my writing, as I concluded that I could talk about the

different approaches to music treatment in patients, as it was extensive, and used in different

patients with specal disabilities. In the future the “Reserach Analysis” methos will help me to

organize my information and summarize what each article is about, their methods, charts, and

findings.

After I submitted my first draft of my “Lieterature Revew,” thanks to the feedback

provided by Dr. Nelson, I was able to improve my review. She told me to combine and condense

a sentence of my introduction (Nelson 1). So once I did it it looked like this: “they have found

significant findings regarding this investigation; therefore, it is not surprising to people that

music is now a reliable treatment to help treat people suffering from fragile mental health,

anxiety, children, and even for people undergoing surgery” (Cervantes). I write some commas

before and after “therefore”, by this way it will be more smooth and understandable. At the same

time Dr. Nelson recommended me to refer veterans as traumatized people, for one of my main

points wich was mental health and the author was Liebowitz, and it ended look like the following
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sentence: “To begin with, the idea of mental health among traumatized people has been studied

in relation to music improving it” (Cervantes).

Also, by the feedback provided of my classmate Samantha Muniz she remind me to write

“et al.”, once I cited the authors, for example for author Beck it is necessary to add the “et al.” so

I do not take credit to any author who has participated in the writing of the compiled articles.

Thus it would look lke this “Beck, et al.” (Cervantes). Next, she also mentioned to me how I

forget to add citation marks in my quotation of my authors, which was an important contribution

because whithour the quotation marks it would not be possible to differentiate the ideas of the

authors from my ideas, ao it would be more difficult to read my literature reviews. The

correction I made was as follows: “group music making activities provide joy, improve quality of

life and address issues such as coping, anger, and low self-esteem” (Cervantes).

Finally, the most challenging aspect of this writing assignment was to find the inspiration

to write. It was not easy to read and even less to accommodate my words, it was really

suffocating to have to read the articles over and over again because of my poor reading

comprehension. It is not easy to concentrate when you are in BIOL 2302 class either, but that is

another topic. Here the thing is that understanding the ideas expressed in the articles was

difficult, understanding the tables of information represented was almost impossible to relate to

the text. However it was possible, now some example that I give you of what I found difficult to

understand is that in a certain article of musical treatment implemented in veterans, it did not

explain in the best way that the students had made a program for the veterans so that in this way

they could put into practice their musical talents, and that the same veterans would later describe

the benefits they felt when singing and being part of a choir. Although it seems like a simple

thing to understand, Dr. Nelson helped me understand it. On the other hand, the least challenging
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aspect for this writing assignment was to ask for help. Dr. Nelson was always available and was

very supportive with my writing skills, also with tutor Camla from TRiO’s program, she was

always checking my assignment and telling me if my paragraphs were understandable.

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Works Cited

Cervantes, Tryana. “Annotated Bibliography: Music Therapy as Possible Health Treatment

Draft 1.” 2 February 2024. ENGL 1302, Texas A&M International University, homework

assignment.

Cervantes, Tryana. “Article Analysis Worksheet.” 18 February 2024. ENGL 1302, Texas A&M

International University, homework assignment.

Cervantes, Tryana. “Music Therapy as a Treatment For Mental Illnesses: Literature Review Draft

1.” 1 March 2024. ENGL 1302, Texas A&M International University.

Cervantes, Tryana. “Music Therapy as a Treatment For Mental Illnesses: Literature Review.”

Final Draft. 8 March 2024. ENGL 1302, Texas A&M International University.