Musical Offerings, Fall 2019

62 Krauss ⦁ Effects of Music Therapy its effect on patients already taking psychiatric medications in order to treat the symptoms of their disorder. The paper is organized by disease states such as depression, bipolar disorder, and post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD). Depression and Anxiety The American Psychiatric Association defines depression (major depressive disorder) as a “common and serious medical illness that negatively affects how you feel, the way you think and how you act” (Parekh, 2017c). Depression is mainly characterized by feeling sad or having a depressed mood, losing interest in previously enjoyable activities, loss of energy or increased fatigue, and even thoughts of death or suicide. The American Psychiatric Association also defines anxiety disorders as those disorders that differ from normal feelings of nervousness or anxiousness and involve excessive fear and anxiety (Parekh, 2017a). Types of anxiety disorders include generalized anxiety disorder, social anxiety disorder, and panic disorder. Treatment for depression and anxiety usually includes cognitive behavioral therapy as well as other forms of psychotherapy, and sometimes antidepressants or antianxiety medications, respectively. In a 2018 study on anxiety and depression levels in Alzheimer’s patients receiving several music therapy sessions lasting about one hour each, patients were shown to experience decreasing levels of stress as well as significantly lowered levels of depression and anxiety. During their sessions, patients were invited to sing an introductory song before being led in a song related to flowers. For these patients, the song on flowers functioned to improve base cognitive levels, memory, and lyric recall, while also strengthening the temporal link between flowers and positive emotions associated with the season of spring. (Ortí et al., 2018). Enzyme-Linked ImmunoSorbent Assay (ELISA) immunoassay technique was used in order to measure the salivary levels of cortisol, and general psychological state was measured using the Hospital Anxiety and Depression Scale. The study showed that after music therapy, patients’ cortisol levels decreased, which is relevant considering recent research which has shown that cortisol is significantly associated with increasing levels of depression (Keller et al., 2017). Not only did the research of Ortí et al. (2018) solidify the previous research on cortisol and its effect on patients’ depression, but it specifically showed that