Our Work For
Mental Health
The importance of music therapy in the life of a self-referring adult
How Can Music Therapy Improve Your Mental Health
Music Therapy can help people with a range of emotional disorders and mental illness and can impact fundamentally on the way people live their lives.
Individual sessions can help to address problems rooted in the past, as in psychotherapy, with the medium for communication being predominantly improvised music.
Group work can be helpful as a means of exploring relationships and be a source of mutual support, reducing isolation and leading to greater self understanding.
Music Therapy can help people to:
- feel more motivated
- express themselves creatively
- develop their social and communication skills
- gain greater awareness of self and others
- build their self-esteem
- think about the impact music has on their lives
- become more confident in making choices
- feel that they are in a secure and accepting environment, where positive change can take place
Find Out How to Self Refer Yourself for Music Therapy
Key Changes will ring you to discuss your interest, and will send you a form for completing, for giving your consent to receive music therapy, and for some referral information, including the name and contact details of another professional who supports you, who the therapist can refer to if required.
A few initial sessions will be recommended, usually 4, from which the therapist will make recommendations, going forward. There will be a cost for therapy provision, which Key Changes will discuss with you before you agree to the first contact with the therapist.
I have been a regular visitor to Priory Gardens for roughly a decade, having been referred there by the mental health team at Connaught House following a nervous breakdown. I have had mental health problems since childhood, mostly due to my Asperger’s syndrome not being recognised until I was 41 (in 2002), and am rarely – if ever – capable of meaningful relationships of any sort, including friendships, so I’m not really able to make use of the centre as a whole, as I have very few interests as well as being left mentally exhausted and lacking in confidence.
Since I was referred to Owain Clarke for music therapy more recently, he has managed to restore some of the lost confidence by encouraging me to achieve one skill at playing music I’ve always liked to hear but never seriously thought I could be capable of performing. This evidence of achievement and the relaxation that playing music can give me has done much to reduce the weight of self-doubt and depression that I have experienced and has restored some sense of hope for the future. There’s still some way to go, both in terms of self-esteem and my piano playing abilities, but I felt it important to point out just what these weekly sessions mean to me.