WORLD MENTAL HEALTH DAY:
MUSIC AND WELLNESS INTERVIEW WITH SMULE & GOOGLE
Monday, October 10th, 2022
For World Mental Health Day, Google sponsored a promotion to highlight arts and wellness. As a part of this campaign, Smule (a global social music technology platform) reached out for expert voices on music and wellness. Lynn, a past Smule employee, spoke to the power of music therapy and music generally as a support for health and wellness.
Arts & Aging presents Touches of Grey: Benefits & Practices of Music Therapy for Older Adults
Saturday, October 20th
4-6pm
Black Duck Inn Corea Harbor, ME
Workshop: 4-5pm Performance: 5-6pm
Suggested Donation Workshop: $10 Performance: $10 Both: $15!
The Black Duck Inn is a Downeast Maine and Acadia Area casually elegant Bed & Breakfast that is home to the Mrs. JC Farley Foundation (a local non-profit supporting Music & Arts education). This presentation is brought to you as part of Mrs. JC’s All-Access Arts Workshop and Performance Series.
Music Therapy creates the context for powerful outcomes in the aging population, and is capable of positively impacting specific domains of functionality such as social communication, psychoemotional health, and motor skill, as well as empowering individuals towards an improved overall quality of life. In this workshop, Lynn will discuss the benefits and practices of Music Therapy with elders. She will outline research and specific techniques, as well as offering interactive experiences of music.
“Music Therapy is the clinical and evidence-based use of music interventions to accomplish individualized goals within a therapeutic relationship by a credentialed professional who has completed an approved music therapy program. Music therapy interventions can be designed to promote wellness, manage stress, alleviate pain, enhance memory, improve communication, and provide unique opportunities for interaction. Research in music therapy supports the effectiveness of interventions in many areas such as facilitating movement and overall physical rehabilitation, increasing motivation to engage in treatment, providing emotional support for clients and their families, and creating an outlet for expression of feelings. Because music therapy is a powerful and non-threatening medium, unique outcomes are possible.
Music therapy treatment is efficacious and valid with older persons who have functional deficits in physical, psychological, cognitive or social functioning. Research results and clinical experiences attest to the viability of music therapy even in those who are resistive to other treatment approaches. Music is a form of sensory stimulation, which provokes responses due to the familiarity, predictability, and feelings of security associated with it.”
-The American Music Therapy Association
“When a couple danced together for the first time after five years of the husband’s deterioration from probable Alzheimer’s disease, the wife said: “Thank you for helping us dance. It’s the first time in three years that my husband held me in his arms.” Tearfully, she said that she had missed him just holding her and that music therapy had made that possible.”
