Music therapy is a viable and useful alternative to more traditional psychological therapeutic methods. As an approach, it is integrated and affects almost every aspect of the body and mind. Moreover, using music therapy to replace or accentuate more traditional therapies often shows considerable success. In particular, these successes are notable in handicapped children, adolescents, and adults. Besides the handicapped, music therapy also benefits people who have emotional or expressive problems.
Music therapy has the ability to cross boundaries of culture, race, and age, and provides a viable means of adjusting behaviors that are difficult to regulate with other types of therapy. In fact, the functionality of music therapy is shown to be very useful with blind, disturbed, or handicapped persons who may have no other mode of expression and find music to be nonthreatening. Data is presented from several case studies to show that, for at least the past three decades, music therapy has been successfully used as an alternative to psycho- or physical therapy. Examples are also given advocating a continuous approach to music therapy, in order to increase its effectiveness.
Music is one of the approaches in therapy that affects the mind, body, and emotions. It is a way to help many of the problems associated with both handicapped and nonhandicapped children and adults. In the broad spectrum of this topic, many scholars and laypersons alike believe that music is "good for people." However, these generalized interpretations do not take into consideration the outlines of music as an alternative therapy. In fact, music therapy is a valuable alternative in problems like mental retardation, cerebral palsy, and other physical and behavior disorders.
One of the basic problems in initially dealing with music therapy as an alternative is the dichotomy between the perception of the therapist and the perception of the musician. ...