 Today, we will be sharing with you 5 interesting ways that music can affect anxiety and depression based on an article from issue 3 of The Sight to Go magazine. When someone is diagnosed with a mental illness, there are many forms of treatment they can choose from. They may take medication or go to counselling or therapy. Some may also find that music helps them. Research has shown that music can have a strong effect on us. It can alleviate anxiety and depression, increase spatial awareness and enhance mood. Interestingly, the genre of music can be important as well. Researchers from the University of Utah Pain Research Center have found that listening to music helped to reduce pain in those who were highly anxious. 143 participants listened to music while receiving electric shocks. It seems therefore that music is good in helping with pain by activating sensory pathways to compete with the pain pathways. Another study looking at anxiety and music was conducted by David Elliott and his colleagues. They wanted to determine what characteristics of music actually helped lower anxiety. The study had 84 people participants and it was found that harmonious sounds were the most relaxing. They even led to a decrease in cortisol. However, it was also found that listening to fast-paced music increased anxiety and so it would seem that the tempo and type of music is very important. Another way music can affect anxiety is through the process of writing it. Writing down anxious thoughts can help alleviate the anxiety around them. It might also be easier to talk about feelings through lyrics and songs than in other ways. Also, reading lyrics that mean a lot to you can help you feel better if you analyze why those lyrics mean a lot to you. So we've seen how music can affect anxiety, but does it also have an effect on depression? Listening to music can change your mood, so it's probably not surprising it can influence people with depression. June Sileney states that music helps you to express emotions and can help encourage you to let go of suppressed ones. Positive upbeat music can help lift your mood while slow and sad music might increase your depression. Also, listening to music associated with bad memories may make your symptoms worse. This depends on the individual, of course. Sometimes listening to sad lyrics can help an individual feel better as they may feel less alone. Like with anxiety, writing music can also have an effect on depression. Writing down your feelings can be very helpful in fighting depression. So writing poems or lyrics about your feelings can help reduce depressive symptoms. Writing out the feelings can be a form of release and has been known to prevent suicide and self-harm. We hope you enjoyed this video. If you did, please remember to like and share this video and subscribe to our channel. For more from our magazine, you can buy them from psych2go.shop or pledge to our Patreon at patreon.com forward slash psych2go magazine.