Music as Medicine: How Adolescents Can Use Music to Benefit Their Mental Health

This paper aims to discover techniques in which music can be used to treat anxiety and depression in adolescents. Studies have demonstrated that music plays a significant role across cultures in affecting mood, performance, and physiological functions. Focusing on adolescents’ mental health, this research further explores these findings and looks at the aspects of music that have the power to change one’s mental and physical state. This paper covers a comprehensive literature review of studies in recent years. These findings connect music’s effectiveness in calming or uplifting an individual to their preference and culture, suggesting that there is no universal song or music genre that is guaranteed to treat mental illness in adolescents. However, given the observed effectiveness of certain music on consolation, performance, and mood, music is still a viable form of medicine – though subjective – when it comes to youth mental health.