musictherapyacademy.com/blog

Contributed by: Mark Pillai

The tale of music and medicine is as old as human history. In preliterate culture, music was practiced for both communication and healing purposes. Prehistoric religious systems upheld music as supernatural force, that effected physical and mental well-being. In Ancient Egypt, priest-physicians used music as a medicine for the soul through magic healing rituals and chant therapies; the Greeks prayed to Apollo, the god of music and medicine, who had the divine power to heal the mortal soul with music. Furthermore, music was empirically understood as a metaphysical...

Written by: Julia Bissessar

Over the past year, I have been preparing and planning for what I will do once I graduate from McMaster University. I am currently in the last year of my undergraduate degree studying Honours Psychology, Neuroscience and Behaviour with Music Cognition specialization. My post-secondary degree has combined my love for music and psychology, and I wish to continue learning more about my passions in a post-graduate degree. After taking courses in music cognition and music therapy in undergrad, I began to consider pursuing a career in music therapy. Currently, there...

Aging is a shared experience that humans expect and recognize. People may anticipate retirement life, envision life with grandchildren, or perhaps begin to ponder what themes and relationships contribute to create their life story. However, data from the Canadian Study on Health and Aging shows that by 2031, 937,000 individuals will be living with dementia, with more than 65 percent of those being women. Dementia is defined as the progressive impairment of cognitive functions such as memory, resulting in difficulty with day-to-day tasks, disorientation, changes in mood or personality, and...

          My interest in learning more about the effectiveness of music therapy in the treatment of patients with an acquired brain injury comes from my passion of helping others who lived a “normal” lifestyle like myself and all of a sudden, due to an unfortunate event in their life- now live without the ability to care for themselves, reliving the trauma of the event that has changed their world forever. As a Psychology graduate from McMaster University, with a background in classical piano and voice, I was challenged with the question- there is...

Contributed by: Julia Bissessar

From a young age, I have participated in both music and dance lessons and they’ve become a very large part of my life. They have shaped my academic career and furthered my interest in music and how it relates to the body and the mind. I can recall many times of my fingers finding the right keys on the piano without much thinking on my end, creating a calm yet hyper-focused state. I also found great relief and satisfaction after completing dance combinations in my ballet classes. From my own experiences, I value the effectiveness of music and movement...

Contributed by: Stephanie An 

While I cannot speak on other experiences, I am writing to you about my journey and personal experiences. 

In the midst of a pandemic and media coverage of many innocent lives being lost, many of us may be experiencing an overwhelming amount of emotions. 

Although many will never truly be prepared for the loss of a loved one, it is not something we can always control throughout life. Losing someone dear to us is never easy and can affect us in many ways throughout our everyday lives. As the loss may reveal many emotions and thoughts that overtake...

By: Olivia Medari

          When thinking of mental illness, we often think of words such as stress, anxiety, or depression. We also live in a society that has also put a stigma on mental illness. When starting research on mental illness my findings suggested that the process to guard mental health is so ambiguous. In medicine, people treat mental illness with pharmaceuticals. For example, if a person has depression, the treatment procedure would be prescribing anti-depressants such as amitriptyline, amoxapine, or clomipramine. However, in a...

McMaster University HTH SCI 4A15- Thesis: Post-Project Reflection Project: Using EEG to measure the effects of improvisational group music therapy on stress and anxiety: an exploration of feasibility

Submitted by: Daniel Friedberg
Supervisors: Annilee Baron, Rachael Finnerty

     One of the most significant lessons I’ve learned during my time in post-secondary education is that work is not about the end goal, it is about the process towards the end goal. As I worked through the stages and components of this thesis project, I was reminded of this again and again as I...

On Oct 21, 2019, our Director of Education Rachael Finnerty was a Guest Speaker in Gabriella Ocadiz's Music and Special Education class at McMaster University. One of the students, Sergio Raez Villanueva, shared his reflection on Rachael's presentation with us. Read Sergio's thoughts below:

Guest Speaker Thoughts

I found our guest speaker, Rachael, to be extremely amiable and welcoming as she explained and shared her experiences with the class. I do not know much about music therapy and her insight was extremely valuable to me as I do have a small background and a big interest in...