Music Therapy And Dementia Essay

Robert W. Groene (1993) studied the effect of music therapy in reducing wandering behavior with thirty Alzheimer’s patients, whose ages ranged from 60-91 years of age and in the late stages of the disease. For the baseline measurements, the wandering behavior of each participant was recorded for a minimum of three days, between the hours of 2:00 p.m. and 5:30 p.m. The subjects were randomly assigned to either a mostly musical condition (i.e., five music sessions and two reading sessions) or to mostly reading sessions (i.e., five reading sessions and two music sessions). Each subject received alternate sessions of individual reading sessions and individualized music therapy each day of the week, for a maximum of 15 minutes. Music therapy

What does music mean to us as listeners and what can music therapy do for people with dementia? Music has a substantial impact on patients living with a form of dementia. Singing well-known songs alone or together brings back pleasant memories of old times. Many meaningful events in our lives are very often accompanied by music, such as receiving your very first kiss, sitting at the kitchen table with your mom while describing your first break-up, and when your children were born. These profound musical memories often remain preserved much longer than many nonmusical memories from the same life-period of the person with dementia. If words are no longer understood or available, familiar sounds will bring a sense of safety and comfort to people who are in the late stages of dementia, or even in the early stages of the disease. Music therapy will assist in the alleviation of anxiety and depression within the elderly, therefore improving their way of life. This conclusion reinforces examining the use of various types of music on the numerous states of mind in advancing stages of dementia and Alzheimer disease. Additional studies may include music for patients with other psychological, physiological, and anxiety-related disorders. The research suggests music can be a useful therapeutic method to treat patients. Specifically, it is a cost-effective and practical way of