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Essay: How Can Society Use Music to Improve Mental Health?

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  • Published: 23 February 2023*
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“How can society use music to improve mental health?”

If I asked you to define music, how would you do it? Would you tell me it is when a collection of sounds have been put together to form a more grand and pleasant sound? Would you mention rhythm, beat, tone, vibration? Maybe you would check dictionary.com. If you quoted them directly you would tell me music is “an art of sound in time that expressed ideas and emotions in significant forms through the elements of rhythm, melody, harmony, and color.” Perhaps you would check Merriam Webster’s definition and tell me music is “the science or art of ordering tones, or sounds in succession, in combination, and in temporal relationships to produce a composition having unity and continuity.” I wouldn’t argue with you either way.

Allow me to start this reading by defining some fundamental components of music. We will then discuss a few fundamental components of anatomy, so that we are able to clearly relate the two. Let’s start with sound. Sound waves, or vibrations, flow into our ears, and the organs within our ear perceive those vibrations as sound. When we dissect vibration, we find that the sound waves, have ups and downs. These are called compressions and rarefactions of sound waves. Have you ever hit a gong, or stood next to a tuba, cello, or piano while the instrument is being played? Better yet, have you ever stood next to the speakers at a concert? The literal feeling of sound, is vibration. You should think of vibration as sound waves, literal waves, and the closer these waves are together, the higher the frequency and pitch of the sound. The further apart these waves are, the lower the pitch and frequency of the sound.  –music theory text book

Music has existed for thousands of years. Consider hymns, chants, drum circles, mantras, and other ritualistic expressions of sound used throughout history. Arguably, the earliest recorded use of music as a therapy are from the year 4000, before christ existed. This was shown in paintings, where priests were playing harps. The assyrians used music to ward off evil spirits, this was around 2000BC. Not long after, the Greeks used music to “conquer passion.” It wasn’t until 500-600 years, before christ existed, that the followers of pythagoras, define the mathematical relationships of tones, and created the Theory of Harmony. Plato expressed in The Republic: “Music is most sovereign because rhythm and harmony find their way to the inmost soul and take strongest hold upon it, imparting grace…” Aristotle was also invested in unravelling music’s influence on humans.  He focused on the psychological benefits of music. He believed music could help us overcome feelings of fear, pity, or grief, and additionally that “mystic music allows one to purify and heal the soul.” There is also record of a physician using music in the context of surgery in 1914. This was brought to light when Dr. Evan Kane published a report on the use of phonograph in the operating room. Not long after, he and W.P Burdick published an article in the American Yearbook of Anesthesia and Analgesia where they had witnessed the effects that music had on patients in aftercare, and decided to bring the music to the operating room. Music proved to have an analgesic and anxiolytic effect on patients, that is, when music was played, less pain was comprehended, and the patients were better able to cope with the stress associated with undergoing anesthesia.

Anxiety and depression are amongst the most commonly diagnosed disorders in the United States. Unfortunately, there is no magic pill to cure people of these often debilitating disorders, and even more unfortunate, the medication that is prescribed for anxiety and depression often bear side effects that outweigh the potential benefits. Anxiety is often treated with antidepressants; this was the case for myself at age 16. I had severe anxiety due to taking on two years of highschool at once, and I had developed an eating disorder in order to solidify the control I had on my life. I went to my general doctor and was prescribed Zoloft, an antidepressant that, like many other antidepressants, is commonly prescribed for anxiety. Over the next two weeks I began to loathe everyone around me including myself. The thoughts I had genuinely scared me. I went back to my doctor and was put on Prozac, and so the experience continues. I quickly realized these pills were not going to be my ride into a more positive and joyful life, so I decided I wanted to be off of them. Being suicidal was better than being homicidal. While coming off of Prozac and Zoloft, I experienced extreme rage, shivers, depression, insomnia, and fogginess of thoughts, all of which are apparently very common of people withdrawing from antidepressants. I would like to point out, I initially went to the doctor because of stress and anxiety levels. I had never felt depressed. I was loving, and caring of everyone around me. All of that changed with antidepressants. Soon after I felt back to “normal” it was time for me to go back to college. My new doctor, in my new town, decided to prescbe me Adderall, 45 mg of it to be exact. I was 145 lbs when I moved to Missoula in August. By November of that same year, I was 102 lbs. Not a wise decision on my doctor’s part. She gave nearly 1400mg of amphetamine each month, to someone who not even a year prior, had to go to a treatment facility for eating disorders; to someone who failed multiple drug tests due to weight loss pills that tested positive for amphetamines. It took me well over a year to consciously quit taking Adderall, and the mental withdrawal symptoms were far worse than anything I have ever experienced.  

There is a very clear problem with modern medical practices when attempting to treat mental disorders. And unfortunately now, one can rarely even go to the stomach or foot doctor without being asked how they feel, and if their answer is anything less than “good,” antidepressants are often the next topic of discussion. I believe that the treatment practices we exercise today, simply propel people into a stronger need for the medication. A quick downward spiral that inevitably leads to needing more and more of whatever prescription is being used. While I have had doctors tell me what I need over and over, I have grown to strongly disagree, and I challenge them, regularly. I present facts about my life, the timeline of which I was prescribed medications and the events that followed. I do have relatively severe anxiety, and I will admit that when left to my own devices, it is possible for me to slip into depression. However, I have found solitude in something free, organic, and null of side effects.

When sound waves travel down the external auditory canal they run into the tympanic membrane, a contact lense shaped membrane, that we often refer to as an eardrum. When the sound waves strike the eardrum, it vibrates, much like a real drum. That vibration then travels through three areas known as the Malleus, Incus, and Stapes, until it reaches the oval window. On the other side of this “window” lies the Conchlear duct, which is surrounded by the perilymph. There is a very small organ, called the Corti, which rests inside the Conchlear duct. The vibration ripples through the perilymph and penetrates the roof of the Conchlear duct in order to reach the small hairs on the outside of the Corti. The Corti then sends nerve impulses to the auditory cortex in the brain’s temporal lobe, and that, is when we interpret that initial sound wave, as sound.

Our bodies function under command of the nervous system. The nervous system uses sensory organs which contain afferent neurons to detect changes in and/or out of the body, then processes that information and determines the appropriate response. It then sends messages to corresponding muscles (motor neurons) and glands (interneurons)  to respond accordingly. The nervous system is composed of the nerves, spinal cord, and brain. However the CNS, or central nervous system only includes the brain and the spinal cord. This is the only place in which interneurons are found. Beyond receiving, processing, and storing information, they are responsible for how we think, feel, and act. Well, they are largely responsible, it’s truly a group effort.  The brain is divided into four parts: cerebrum, diencephalon, cerebellum, and the brainstem. The temporal lobe, where we interpret vibration as sound,  is just one of the five lobes that our cerebrum is divided into. It is responsible for hearing, emotional behavior, memory, smell, and visual recognition. Injury to the temporal lobe can cause a person to no longer recognize themselves or people they have known for many years. It could also completely change their “personality” (emotional behaviors), and their ability to interpret sounds and smells. Consider dementia, Parkinson’s, Alzheimer’s, and other conditions in which the previously mentioned aspects of a person have been effected. During this text, I encourage you to bear in mind that while the temporal lobe is where the hearing response starts, it is not the only area that is affected by sound waves. As you probably know, the brain, like the entire body, is 100% interconnected. There is arguably no part of the brain that can be affected in some way, without affecting the rest of the brain. This leads us to the Limbic system.

The limbic system, often referred to as the emotional brain, is what we can blame for our feelings of anger, fear, sorrow, sexual feelings, and also pleasure. If other areas of our cerebrum aren’t working effectively, we may experience a lack of emotional balance. This can be expressed in fits of rage, bouts of depression, severe anxiety and paranoia. The limbic system essentially links higher levels of thinking, to automatic functions. Two important structures within the limbic system are the Hippocampus, which turns our short term memory into long term memory, and the amygdala, which are two almond shaped masses of neurons that rest on both sides of the thalamus. The amygdala are responsible for emotions like anger, jealousy, and fear, but can also recall emotion from past events. When you feel sad, on the day of a loved one’s death, or feel a sense of pleasure when hearing an old song, you can acknowledge that as your amygdala, hard at work.

Now that we have discussed how vibration enters the ear and comes to be interpreted as sound, and also what exactly in our brain is responsible for how we process emotion, let us briefly discuss the hormones that are unbalanced or heightened when we feel anxious or depressed. Hormones can be defined as chemicals, that are secreted by various cells and glands throughout our body that govern hunger, weight, how we sleep, and most importantly in this context, how we handle stress. They are secreted by cells in various organs throughout the body such as the heart, brain, and small intestine. Ever heard the saying, “a happy gut, is a healthy gut?” Well, hormones are exactly why that saying came into fruition. Keep this in mind when considering the effect music has on the brain’s functions. Perhaps music could help us with more than mental disorders. (Thompson, Understanding A&P)

Works Cited

Sloan Gale Thompson. Understanding Anatomy and Physiology 2e, F.A. Davis Company, January 16, 2015

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