Why Your Mental Health Needs Music

The more we understand about mental health, the more we learn that there are many ways you can look after yours. Enter music therapy – a form of psychology that could be just what you need.

- Busang Senne

Music helps us make sense of our life and gives us emotional release,’ says Lise MacDonald, a music therapist in Jo’burg and a member of the South African Music Therapy Association (SAMTA). Here’s why music therapy – a type of psychology – could be for you.

Music what?

‘Anticipation and experience of peak emotions (chills and goose bumps) during music listening have been found to lead to the release of dopamine,’ says Kobie Swart of the University of Pretoria’s Department of Music. ‘Dopamine is associated with a pleasure and-reward system usually activated by eating, sex and certain drugs. Music is an acoustic stimulus with the same effect.’

‘We all have musical skills and instincts,’ says MacDonald. ‘Just think about the inherent musical qualities – tone, pitch, tempo and volume – of our vocal expressions such as laughing, sighing, crying and speech.’ That’s why music is used as a form of clinical psychology. Music therapy is the application of various music techniques – from songwriting to improvisation – to manage mental health.

‘In a music-therapy session, the therapist will use music to provide a safe space for the nonverbal expression of emotion,’ says MacDonald. ‘This is similar to what happens verbally in a psychology session.’

While music therapy only formally landed on our soil in 1999, it’s been recognised as a degree in the US since 1944 and has been practised within our communities informally for centuries. Swart, along with Professor Mercedes Pavlicevic, pioneered music therapy in South Africa and introduced the formal practice to the University of Pretoria’s Department of Music in 1999. It’s the first course of its kind in the country, and it’s approved by the Health Professions Council of South Africa.