How Music Can Benefit Seniors

Listening to or playing music is fun and enjoyable, but music offers many more benefits than its entertainment value alone. These benefits are particularly helpful to seniors. Whether seniors are living in home care, a professional nursing home, or another type of caregiving facility, music can make a difference in their quality of life. 

Provide Holistic Care

Music can be an important element of holistic nursing and caregiving. Facilities that take a holistic approach focus on the patient as a whole person and emphasize the patient’s ability to help heal themselves. Holistic care often incorporates empathetic listening and aromatics, and music therapy can enhance this holistic approach. 

Music therapy focuses on treating patients through the power of music. It’s often used to help people with autism since it can stimulate both hemispheres of the brain and supports overall cognitive function, and this can help seniors keep their minds active in the same way. Music also gives people a way to communicate without words, which can be particularly helpful for seniors who can no longer speak. Even in homecare settings, caregivers can hire music therapists to come into the home to work with a senior.  

Help Seniors Work Through Past Trauma

Seniors who have experienced past trauma can also benefit from music and music therapy. Nursing home abuse is a serious and widespread issue today, and music therapy can support seniors who have undergone trauma in a previous nursing home or another environment. 

Music therapy can help seniors to process and heal from the trauma that they’ve experienced. Often, people who have experienced trauma have emotions that they can’t easily access or express, but music therapy can help with that expression. Trained music therapists can use music to help with relaxation, or they may encourage a senior to create music, interpret and assign emotions to music, or use music in another way that helps them to process their past trauma. 

Dealing with trauma isn’t a step-by-step process, either. A senior may have sudden reactions and memories because of the trauma, and this requires that the therapy change and adapt, too. Music therapy can be easily adjusted to provide what the senior needs at that very moment, and it can also be paired with other more traditional therapy forms, like counseling. 

Support Mental Health and Memory

Music can also play an important role in mental health. Music can have a direct effect on a senior’s mood, so nursing homes and healthcare settings can use that to their advantage by playing upbeat, happy, or soothing music to help residents stay relaxed and content. Before a doctor’s appointment or another stressful event, having a senior listen to a soundtrack of songs that they enjoy could help to relax them and may even help them be more cooperative.

Music also affects cognitive function, which is particularly important in seniors. A study performed in Spain analyzed cognitive function in adults age 59 and up. The study compared the cognitive function of adults who were involved with music during their lives to the function in adults who received musical training when they were older. The study found that those participants who engaged in music during their lives had improved cognitive function, including reasoning, their attention, and the speed at which they were able to process information. 

But the study also found that the participants who received musical training late in their adulthood showed similar cognitive improvements and benefits. This indicates that it’s never too late to learn to play an instrument or sing and suggests that nursing home residents might enjoy improved cognitive function if allowed to participate in regular music lessons and groups. 

Help Seniors Stay Engauged

When facilities embrace and use music to help seniors, it creates a valuable way for seniors to get involved. Music lessons and music groups create important social opportunities for seniors, and they’re very hands-on activities. These sessions can give seniors something to look forward to and work toward. When seniors learn music, they have the opportunity to meet other people with similar interests. If seniors have always had a goal to play an instrument, getting the chance to finally learn that instrument can make for a meaningful and rewarding experience. 

Music is also accessible. Age and physical restrictions aren’t barriers to music, meaning that any senior can learn an instrument or learn to sing if they’d like to. This can create a sense of unity and build relationships between seniors, especially when they’re enjoying the experience of playing music together. In a home care setting, music lessons can give a senior a reason to leave the home and interact with others. 

Creating a music group in a facility can foster senior engagement, which in turn promotes dignity among residents. Allowing a resident with past musical training to lead the group can be a great way to honor that resident’s skills and knowledge. Seniors who learn to play music will be able to see their improvement and can feel a sense of accomplishment, too.  

There are many ways that seniors can benefit from music, and because music is accessible, it’s easy to implement in professional care settings, home care settings, and more. 

How Music Can Benefit Seniors