Sofia Navarro & Amy Duenez

April 10, 2024

Outline assignment for Music as Mental Self Care

Hook: Music is a powerful source of taking care of one self’s pre-existing mental disorders, poor
mental health, or to prevent any damage that may come in the future.
Thesis: Music can be beneficial for those suffering with poor mental health because it has
positive effect on an individual’s mood and feeling, which is beneficial because listening to
music can relieve stress and decrease anxiety, which can improve one’s overall health

Body 1
Topic sentence: Unfortunately, stress is something that a plethora of individuals go through in
their lifetime; however, listening to music or having it in the background decreases stress that
leads to health problems.
Point: Stress can lead to major health problems or be life threatening. For example, Author’s
Last Name 2 Suzanne B. Hanser states “stress may be the single most significant factor related to
the increasing rate of suicide in the United States,” which shows that stress develops life
threatening diseases and behavior; however, this can be reduced with “relaxing” or “sedative”
music (193).
Evidence: Moreover, when students listened to music for relaxation as the main reason,
Alexandra Linnemann et al. found that this showed that listening to music for “relaxation” had a
significant reduction in stress (88).
Source: Linnemann, Alexandra, et al. “Music Listening as a Means of Stress Reduction in Daily
Life.” Psychoneuroendocrinology, Pergamon, 21 June 2015, pp. 82-90.,
www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0306453015002127.
Explanation: For example, when speaking about how music relives her stress, Alejandra
Espinoza discusses how working on homework with a difficult question that stresses her out she
listens to classical music because it helps her focus more on the assignment and not
procrastinate.
Body 2
Topic sentence: Furthermore, music has a positive effect when it comes to decreasing anxiety
because music slows the heart rate and lowers blood pressure.
Point: Anxiety comes with many different types of emotions, which includes uncontrollable
shaking or crying and overthinking. Music helps control this because it allows the individual to
listen or pay attention to something else.
Evidence: As an example, Gail Kaempf and Margaret E. Amodei claim that music is soothing
for anxiety patients, and it ”increases or decreases breathing, blood volume, pulse rate, and blood
pressure” (114).
Source: Kemper, Katie J., and Danhauer, Suzanne C. “Music as Therapy” Researchgate,
Southern Medical Journal , Apr. 2005, www.researchgate.net/profile/Kathi-Kemper-2/publica
tion/264954368_Music_as_Therapy/links/5a79cc37a6fdcc4ffe92751d/Music-asTherapy.pdf.
Explanation:

Body 3
Topic sentence: Music allows individuals to process their trauma better due to the lyrics and the
type of emotions that come with the song.
Point: Furthermore, people have experienced the power and impact music has on their trauma
Evidence: For example, Keith M. Davis illustrates the emotions children have after experiencing
trauma and states that the expressive use of music is a powerful therapeutic tool within
adolescents who have gone through trauma (125).
Source: Bensimon, Moshe, et al. “Drumming through Trauma: Music Therapy with
Post-Traumatic Soldiers.” The Arts in Psychotherapy, vol. 35, no. 1, 2008, pp. 34–48.,
doi:10.1016/j.aip.2007.09.002.
Explanation: Processing trauma is very difficult to do because whether it is sexual assault,
losing a loved one, kidnapping, psychical abuse, being in war, or violence within relationships it
is difficult to relieve stress of their traumatic experience.

Body 4
Topic sentence: Music allows individuals to process their trauma better due to the lyrics and the
type of emotions that come with the song.
Point:Expressive arts (music) is used to help an individual grow and heal from their trauma,
furthermore, music allows an individual to “hold and express emotional and reflective
experience, and to expand and deepen personal understanding and meaning”
Evidence: Moreover, Moshe Bensimon, Dorit Amir, and Yuval Wolf state that music is
therapeutic to combat soldiers who have been diagnosed with PTSD (34).
Source:Bensimon, Moshe, et al. “Drumming through Trauma: Music Therapy with
Post-Traumatic
Soldiers.” The Arts in Psychotherapy, vol. 35, no. 1, 2008, pp. 34–48.,
doi:10.1016/j.aip.2007.09.002.
Explanation: Moreover, PTSD is an overwhelming threat in which there is distressing feelings
and thoughts of terror and death; however, group music therapy "increased a sense of
openness,togetherness, belonging, sharing, closeness, connectedness, and intimacy” (45
Bensimon, Moshe, et al.).
Evidence:Keith M. Davis illustrates the emotions children have after experiencing trauma and
states that the expressive use of music is a powerful therapeutic tool within adolescents who have
gone through trauma (125).
Source: Davis, Keith. “Music and the Expressive Arts with Children Experiencing Trauma.”
Journal of
Creativity in Mental Health, vol. 5, no. 2, 2010, pp. 125–133.,
doi:10.1080/15401383.2010.485078.
Explanation:

Body 5
Topic sentence:Furthermore, going through depression can be one of the hardest things a person
will go through, but music is able to relieve some of this pain because it improves an individual’s
mood and lets the individual connect with their feelings.
Point: For instance, many people go to music when they are going through difficult times and
feel depressed because hearing music and being able to express one self’s feelings is a way to
cope and let out all their emotions.
Evidence:For example, Sergio Castillo-Pérez, Virginia Gómez-Pérez, Minerva Calvillo Velasco,
Eduardo Pérez-Campos, and Miguel-Angel Mayoral state that there are many treatments for
depression; however, they make no difference and music has been found effective in many
disorders including depression (387).
Source: Castillo-Pérez, Sergio, et al. “Effects of Music Therapy on Depression Compared with
Psychotherapy.” The Arts in Psychotherapy, vol. 37, no. 5, 2010, pp. 387–390.,
doi:10.1016/j.aip.2010.07.001.
Evidence: Meanwhile, Kristen J. Eckhardt and Julie A. Dinsmore state that around 25% of
women and 12% of men experience depressive episodes in their lifetime; however, music
therapy is effective tool to arouse emotions and “can act as a springboard to help clients put
emotions into words and thus facilitate communication” (177).
Explanation: Thus, listening to music as therapy for depression is effective as it decreases their
stress and improves their mental health.
Source:Eckhardt, Kristen J, and Julie A Dinsmore. “Creating Space for Connection.” Journal of
Creativity in Mental Health, vol. 1, no. 2, 2005, pp. 175–187.,
doi:10.1300/j456v01n02_09.
Explanation:For instance, many people go to music when they are going through difficult times
and feel depressed because hearing music and being able to express one self’s feelings is a way
to cope and let out all their emotions.

Conclusion
Re-stating the thesis: Music therapy has a major positive impact when it comes to reducing
stress, decreasing anxiety, improving an individual’s mental health.
Summary: Research has proven that music can benefit someone’s declining mental well-being.
Look into the structure
The correct format & structure: It has the right font. It has the right text size. It has the right
indents. It has the right paragraph order (introduction, body paragraphs, and conclusion). The
author input the correct information (name, professor, course, date DD/MM/YYYY). The author
followed the page number format (last name 1, last name 2, …). Follows the correct format for
the Works Cited page.