What is music therapy?

Music appeals to almost everyone, regardless of their age, talent or cultural or social background.
Perception is stimulated in many ways when people hear or play tones and melodies and rhythms. Music enables feelings and emotions to be expressed and communicated in a manner that enriches, expands or even replaces language. It also allows ways of experiencing and behaving to be explored and further developed in a playful fashion. In addition, music enables contact and encounters in situations where speech is underdeveloped, limited or even non-existent due to physical or mental disabilities.The field of music therapy takes into account all of these attributes in order to utilise music as a medium for fostering perception, expression and behaviour with the goal of stimulating and furthering individual development and transformation processes.

Methodology

Music therapy is based on knowledge and experience obtained from psychology, special needs education, psychotherapy, the medical professions, musicology, music psychology and musical practice.

Music therapy methodology is founded in a respectful and appreciative attitude towards patients. All music therapy interventions involve careful consideration of the mutual feedback process in the therapeutic relationship, with all of its various characteristics and dynamic elements.Along with the medium of music (improvisation, songs, composed instrumental music), music therapy also addresses aspects of language (language games, expression of imagination, discussions) and the body (perception of one's own body, relaxation exercises, movement). Here, psychodynamic and functionally focused approaches complement one another. Depending on the given therapeutic requirements, music therapy treatments are carried out actively (patient plays an instrument, sings, moves to music) and/or receptively (therapist plays for the patient, who listens). Non-verbal experiences are also discussed and reflected upon in conversations wherever this is possible and useful.

Areas of application

Music therapy is utilized in hospitals and/or in the clinical fields of psychiatry, special needs education and various forms of rehabilitative medicine to treat specific medical indications displayed by children, teenagers, adults and the elderly. It is also used as a technique for outpatient services in these areas.

Objectives

Music therapy offers a way to enable patients to experience themselves (to the extent they are capable) as a bio-psycho-socio-spiritual whole, as well as expand their creative abilities, develop a sense of responsibility for themselves and the world around them, and move forward in a process in which they can discover meaning in their lives and formulate goals for the future. This humanistic approach is used as a basis for achieving individual development goals in line with the diagnosis and medical indication in question.