Researchers at the University of York and the Royal College of Music have proposed a new way of harnessing music therapy for the diagnosis, assessment and monitoring of depression:
“Phatic behaviors in conversation can include small-talk, interjections and gestures which put the other person at ease and strengthen social bonds and understanding. These behaviors can change during depression in a range of ways such as longer pauses within a speaker’s turn, a drop in rate of speech, an overall fall in vocal pitch and a reduction in eye contact.
“The researchers suggest that similar communicative behaviors exist in improvisational music therapy.
“Changes observed in behavior, such as vocal pitch and physical movements, during these musical interactions could provide identifiable and robust markers of an individual’s mental state and help therapists to diagnose and monitor depression in clients.
“Dr. Sarah Knight, from the University’s Department of Psychology, said, ‘Under the blanket term of depression, people have very different needs and manifestations. We wanted to find a way to trace change over time both for different client groups and for therapists from a range of backgrounds.
“Changes observed in behavior, such as vocal pitch and physical movements, during these musical interactions could provide identifiable and robust markers of an individual’s mental state and help therapists to diagnose and monitor depression in clients. Image is in the public domain
“ ‘We are hopeful this approach of monitoring changes in a systematic way is something that could be applied more generally as part of the framework of care that therapists provide.’ ”
Read the full article here.
You might be interested in other articles in News and Research.
The Grief Project 