Nearly unquantifiable

Personal values... sometimes they have personality 'tests' and values 'tests' that ask you certain questions like government spending on social programs, what should be done about the homeless, the value of higher education, etc etc. One of the things they ask is whether or not you would consider it risky to pursue alternative medicine, or how likely you are to go for it. Well I myself am always interested in those alternative methods of healing, looking at the body and health wholisticly, and wondering about those... more fuzzy options as far as health solutions. (Not to say I would necessarily pay large sums of money to try them)



Last week I came across this page. I'm sure there are many more like it that have all sorts of cool tidbits as well, but I haven't found them yet. This quantifies what some people believe about music or art in relation to healing.



To sum up the major points on the page so that you don't actually have to visit, regular exposure to music and music with art improved mental health. The test subjects were living in nursing homes, so one would assume that they do not have much music.
"Once the testing was complete, the results showed a statistically significant improvement in depression scores and in mood and behavior patterns"


I think it's fantastic that music has this effect. I think it should be made easily available to everyone, regardless of their life and circumstances. Same with natural sunlight, and seeing people regularly. There just seem to be some basic things we humans seem to do better with.


“At Baptist Medical Center, we took our Room Service program in, and on the first day, there was this woman who was comatose — totally unresponsive,” said Jenkins. “She said the only thing that brought her out of the coma was the music. Many of the staff witnessed it.”


When you do research like this, though, you have the 'chicken or the egg' questions. Are people who participate of better disposition, therefore more likely to recover from depression? Does opening the self to new experiences also open the subject to new and positive thoughts, regardless of the music played?



I suppose it doesn't matter too much as long as you don't attribute the result with a conceived cause. Guns don't kill people.... people do. (the guns do make it easy though)