Informative Essay: The Benefits Of Music Therapy

Music therapy. A term that has grown so much over the past few decades. As a music therapist in training, when people find out what I’m studying, the common response is “wow, that sounds so interesting, what is it?” I then often struggle to find the words to describe such an amazing concept to people in such few words. The trouble is that “music therapy means different things to different people for myriad reasons” (Bruscia, 1998). The challenge in defining music therapy is that it is the combination of two fields; music and therapy, which are both things that people are still struggling to define.
After breaking down what music therapy is to me as much as possible, I came to a compressed version of my definition: Music therapy is the purposeful use of music by an accredited music therapist, in a therapeutic context to reach individualized goals of a specific client of any age, ability, institution and background.
I tried to keep my elevator pitch as broad as possible because music therapy really does contain so many approaches, interventions and work with all …show more content…
I also believe that having the benefits in the definition is a good way to emphasize how powerful music therapy truly is. In discussing all the positive features of music therapy you can catch people’s interest to either do it themselves or recommend it to someone they know, both great ways of getting potential job placements. I think that being able to market music therapy as a field which can focus on various populations is a great way to provide accessibility. Overall I would use this definition to educate the public on music therapy, it has come a long way, although many people are still so uninformed on the topic. The possibilities that music therapy services provide is endless and so the more people who are educated, the more potential there is to develop and advocate for music therapy as a