Mental Health: - Music therapy has been demonstrated to increase socialization and sense of belonging, improve symptoms of anxiety and depression, increase treatment compliance and motivation, and improve sleep patterns (Jackson, 2013)
Autism Spectrum Disorder (ASD): - "Children with ASD perceive important linguistic information embedded in music stimuli" and were able to "transform the information perceived within musical patterns into speech patterns". (Lim 2010) -Music was demonstrated to reduce distractibility and boredom in children with ASD while learning signed and spoken words. (Buday 1995)
Chemotherapy: -The group who received one-on-one music therapy demonstrated decreases in average anxiety while the control group who received standard care demonstrated an increase in overall average anxiety levels during treatment. (Ferrer 2007)
Adolescents: - “Music therapy can address a number of the same goals as more traditional therapies such as counseling, however, adolescents may perceive it very differently.” (Clements-Cortes 2014) -"Adolescents may be more comfortable expressing their feelings through an art form, rather than talking." (Clements-Cortes 2014) -“The task of engaging resistant and reluctant adolescents who have had countless interactions with helping professionals of all sorts, some positive and some tremendously negative, is monumental. The evidence gathered via this research indicates that the intervention fostered a group environment in which guarded, difficult to engage, at-risk adolescents felt comfortable and connected enough to engage in surprisingly honest and bold self-disclosure.” (Olson-McBride & Page 2012)
Older Adults: - On average, patients who received no music lived 24.48 days while patients receiving music therapy lived 141.28 days in a hospice care facility. (Hilliard 2004) -When comparing music therapists to nurses and social workers, it was found that music therapists were able to address physiological, cognitive, emotional, and spiritual needs while nurses and social workers only addressed two of these areas. (Hilliard 2004)