As everyone gets back in the swing of a school year schedule, it is important to have tools to help manage academic stress. Academic stress can be defined as a product of a combination of academic related demands that exceed the adaptive resources available to an individual. Sharma and Jagdey did a study to measure how effective music therapy was on enhancing self-esteem among academically stressed adolescents. Self-esteem has been found to have a direct effect on an individual’s proneness to stress.
In this study, they took students age 15-18 years old and split them into two groups. One group received the musical treatment and the other one just received tips on how to manage stress. In this study, the music was delivered through a pre-recorded method where the participants were just listening. The music therapy sessions we provide at Therabeat are all with a trained music therapist, so the benefits are most likely to be increased when live patient-preferred music is utilized. Even with just the use of recorded music though, they found positive results in this study.
The group that received music therapy had a significant increase in self-esteem. The self-reported posttest did not however show significant results for the non-musical group in the study. The authors of the study hypothesize that music had such a positive effect because it can meet psychological, social and emotional needs that very few other interventions can address.
-Lauren Booke, Music Therapy Intern
Sharma, Mamta, & Jagdev, Tanmeet. (2012). Use of music therapy for enhancing self-esteem among academically stressed adolescents.(Report). Pakistan Journal of Psychological Research, 27(1), 53-64.