- Do people with dementia who listen to their favorite songs require less anti-depressives and anti-anxiety medications? (UWM photos by Peter Jakubowski)
Can simply listening to one’s favorite songs improve memory, mood and quality of life for the 5 million people with dementia in the United States alone? Can the tempos of big band music and the ballads of Elvis Presley, for example, lessen reliance on pharmacological treatments for anxiety and depression?
Faculty and undergraduate students at UWM are trying to answer these questions in one of the most comprehensive evaluations of the increasingly popular Music & Memory program. The results are being awaited by healthcare professionals nationwide; meanwhile, the study has captured national attention in the Associated Press, USA Today and more.
Music therapy is an established discipline. But the ability to listen to one’s personal, favorite songs on demand is a newcomer, an outgrowth of technology that was not part of the lives of today’s dementia patients. This is where the door has been cracked open and whether it will usher in a new and scientifically proven therapeutic tool for dementia patients is yet to be determined.
Today, we know that one’s deep and personal relationship with music does not weaken with age. “Even if we develop dementia, our musical abilities and our memories associated with particular songs seem to remain intact,” says Jung Kwak, associate professor, social work, UWM Helen Bader School of Social Welfare and scientist with UWM’s Center for Aging and Translational Research.
Kwak’s research has garnered national attention. Watch a video produced by the Associated Press. View full size on YouTube
“More than 70 percent of people with dementia are affected by depression, aggression, anxiety, apathy or withdrawal. The usual treatment is medication,” says Kwak, the study’s co-principal investigator. Kwak and a UWM research team are testing if the Music & Memory program is as effective as the usual pharmacological treatments for dementia. “We are studying whether people with dementia who listen to their favorite songs require less anti-depressant and anti-anxiety medications,” she says.
With funding from the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services and the Wisconsin Department of Health Services (DHS), the New-York-based Music & Memory program is being implemented during 2014-15 in 100 Wisconsin nursing homes. The basics of this individualized music listening program are simple enough; Family and care staff identify a dementia patient’s favorite music, create a playlist, then use iPods and headphones to deliver the tunes. Nursing home staff who have witnessed the effects of the program describe it as magical and a 2014 documentary about it, Alive Inside, captures the indisputable excitement of watching a non-communicative person light up and start talking when the music begins. In October, Alive Inside won the Allen (Bud) H. and Suzanne L. Selig Audience Award for best feature at the 2014 Milwaukee Film Festival.
But until now, Music & Memory—which has spread to 45 states and six countries—has not been rigorously evaluated, which is where Kwak and the UWM research team come in. Initially, they are evaluating the program at 10 nursing homes, intensively following 60 residents at these sites.
According to DHS Secretary Kitty Rhoades, the program evaluation is necessary to determine if the immediate improvements associated with Music & Memory stay with patients in ways that influence caregiving. “There is plenty of anecdotal evidence of the immediate impact that the Music and Memory Program has when a resident with dementia responds to a favorite song, and that’s wonderful,” she said. “But only through research will we begin to understand the long-range effects on things such as the extent of memory recovery, how the music can help to prevent agitation or combativeness without the use of medications, and the program’s overall effects on the quality of life of the participants. I am looking forward to seeing the findings from this research.”
