How hip-hop music can help combat mental health issues like depression

A new study has claimed that listening to rap music can help combat mental health issues. Experts believe that music made by hip-hop artists could be used to help sufferers of conditions such as schizophrenia and depression, the Daily Star reported. According to scientists at Cambridge University, hip-hop music showed an awareness of issues connected with mental health. Brain experts asserted that songs like Eminem’s ‘Stan’ or Pharrell Williams’ ‘Happy’ contained messages about mental health. 

Alicia Sheilah: Many musical therapy experts recommend making music a part of your daily life, because its effects can improve with time. There is evidence that, over time, your language skills, creativity, happiness, and more, can improve with regular musical therapy. There are different components to music that can have an effect. Pitch, harmony, frequency, melody and rhythm all affect the brain in different ways.

How does music help a person relax?

Alicia Sheilah: One of my most recent CDs ‘The Tree of Life’, is a CD of guided meditation through the seven chakras, to help one relax and find a new dimension of living. Music can help listeners find inner peace and serenity. This practical audio guide invites all to live more consciously and transforms our raw basic energies into a harmonious way of living. In another of my CDs, ‘Shanti’, you can feel all your tension wash away, de-stress and relax.

How does music help align all the chakras of a person?

Alicia Sheilah: We have seven major chakras that are aligned in an ascending column from the base of the spine to the top of the head. These chakras are influenced by everything we do, and go in and out of alignment due to stress, minor illnesses and even our fast-paced lifestyles. Music can help realigned these chakras in the body.