What is music therapy?

Music therapy is a health service that includes a set of methods that use sound that may or may not be music, and which are used to diagnose, prevent, treat, rehabilitate and promote physical and mental health and spiritual development.

Music therapy is applied from conception and the earliest childhood to old age, individually and in groups, in healthy and sick, in all branches of medicine and in all types of congenital and acquired disabilities.

Under the auspices of music therapy, a number of different techniques and methods are being developed so that music therapy can be applied to all persons regardless their verbal, physical and intellectual capacities and degree of musicality.

Music therapy in the modern sense implies that it is applied by an educated music therapist, that there is a clear theoretical concept confirmed in practice, that there is a clear indication for the use of music therapy in a particular patient / client or group of patients / clients; that the effects of the application of music therapy are measured and prospectively monitored, and the results are presented at professional meetings and published in professional journals.

Methods of receptive music therapy imply the application of a tested musical performance by which the desired psychological effect is achieved.

Methods of active music therapy include achieving communication and therapeutic goals through voice or instrument with a patient (group of patients) in whom the verbal mode of communication is difficult or impossible.