Today, sound has been incorporated into many different types of therapeutic settings, including hospital surgery, recovery, and birthing wards; the care of patients with Alzheimer's disease, cancer, and AIDS; hospice (for the dying); for birthing; dentistry; and psychotherapy.

 

  Music in the hospital setting is not a new phenomenon - it is used to reduce pain in surgical, dental, obstetrical, and gynecological procedures. Where music therapy is introduced patients view their hospitalization more positively, report reduced physical discomfort, and experience improvement in mood parameters. Ralph Spintge, M.D., of Germany, Executive Director of the International Society for Music in Medicine, has completed a study of nearly ninety-thousand patients in the peri- and post-operative phases of surgery. Ninety-seven percent of the patients said music during their recovery helped them relax. Other patients found that music enabled them to get by with less anesthesia. Soft, tonal music was found to be especially effective. Patients who listened to slow baroque or classical music a few days before surgery, then had it filtering through the recovery room, found that the music minimized postoperative disorientation.

 

  Music therapy can be particularly healing in Alzheimer's patients. Patients who cannot communicate verbally and are unable to initiate purposeful movement have increased needs for sensory and environmental stimulation that can tap into remote memory. Music and speech patterns (tone and rhythm) are very effective and are used not only to provide psychological comfort, but also to enhance communication in an older individual who may be withdrawn, depressed, or institutionalized.

  This training to improve communication is proven and recommended. Family members can be trained to improve communication with loved ones using a variety of methods to increase attentiveness, especially for those in the early and midphases of the disease. These include tapping the hand in rhythm with speech, reading poetry to music, and playing music that has language-based phrasing, such as the slow movement of baroque concertos. Music as a time-ordered art form can make music therapy sessions beneficial by helping to reorient patients who become distracted by the symptoms of Alzheimer's. For individuals in the final stages of the disease, music therapy intervention frequently takes a palliative form and can be used to provide psychological comfort.

 

  Therese Schroeder-Sheker is an academic musicologist who founded the field of music thanatology. Using voice and harp in a twenty-year clinical practice, she reconstructed the medieval infirmary music once used within monastic medicine to comfort the dying. Her work has been successfully applied in numerous home, hospital, and hospice settings for the treatment of cancer, respiratory illnesses, and AIDS. Schroeder-Sheker calls it "musical-sacramental-midwifery." It is being used at St. Patrick Hospital and at the Mountain West Hospice, both in Missoula, Montana, as well as in other programs in the United States and Europe. Other professionals can be of great benefit to the person who is making the transition, as well as to his or her friends and relatives.

 

  Dr. Halpern says that many parents have discovered the benefits of playing a variety of relaxing music to their babies while still inside the womb. But when it comes to actually choosing the soundtrack for the delivery room, the best long-term results, in terms of the health and well-being of the newborn, are coming from births that provide soothing, nurturing soundtracks.

  The therapeutic application of music can be beneficial for the expectant mother who may be in a state of confusion during labor. Listening to music during the birth process often enhances feelings of comfort and security, and heightens self-esteem, socialization, and personal control over the situation.

 

  For more than fifty years, the curing properties of music have been implemented in dentistry and oral surgery. Wallace Gardner, D.M.D., of Boston, Massachusetts, asserts that loud, stimulating music effectively alleviated pain in 65 percent of his patients, and a Boston study found that sound stimulation was the only analgesic agent required in 90 percent of the five thousand dental operations performed. Additional research shows that due to the release of endorphins (the body's own natural pain killers), audio analgesia with dental patients is comparable in effectiveness to morphine.

 

  Medical research conducted in the 1950s, showed that music can evoke a range of emotions from sadness to joy, and can be used to moderate feelings of anger or depression. When music is enhanced by imagery, one's moods and physical sensations can change rapidly. Recent experiments by Stanislav Grof, M.D., Jean Houston, Ph.D., and Helen Bonny, Ph.D., all show how music helps to deepen many aspects of the therapeutic process. A combination of music, imagery, and breathing cannot only bring about strong emotional releases, but can tap into realms of the unconsciousness that only the most powerful of drugs have been able to do.

  Dr. Bonny, former Director of Music Therapy at the Catholic University of America, in Washington, D.C., had used music to facilitate psychotherapy, but began using music to heal herself when she developed heart disease. From her work, Dr. Bonny developed a technique called Guided Imagery and Music (GIM). She says that GIM involves listening in a relaxed state to selected music, a programmed tape, or live music in order to elicit mental imagery, symbols, and deep feelings arising from the deeper conscious self. GIM is used in conjunction with psychotherapy for neurotic patients and as a way to lessen pain and anxiety and explore consciousness in mentally healthy people.