Music therapy can take place in a wide variety of settings including (but not limited to) schools, private practices, psychiatric hospitals, rehabilitative facilities, medical hospitals, outpatient clinics, daycare treatment centers, agencies serving developmentally disabled persons, community mental health centers, drug and alcohol programs, senior centers, nursing homes, hospice programs, correctional facilities, halfway houses. (American music therapy association, 2021.) Music therapy can be applied through singing, dancing, listening, and creating music.

(Carpente, 2016; Geretsegger et al., 2014; LaGasse, 2014; Pater, Spreen, & van Yperen, 2021; Schmid, 2020)

• May help individuals with ASD to improve their skills in primary outcome areas that constitute the core of the cognition including:

  • Social interaction

  • Verbal communication

  • Initiating behavior

  • Social-emotional reciprocity

  • Nonverbal communication skills

  • Self-regulation

  • Engagement

• Improvements in areas of self-regulation, engagement, behavioral organization, and two-way purposeful communication

• Secondary outcomes include:

  • Social adaption skills

  • Improved quality of life in school, home, and other environments

  • Improved family relationships

  • Increases attention and concentration

• Research supports connections between speech and singing, rhythm and motor behavior, memory for song and memory for academic material, and overall ability of preferred music to enhance mood, attention, and behavior to optimize the student’s ability to learn and interact. (Carpente, 2016; Schmid, 2020)

• Music is used as the therapeutic stimulus to achieve non-musical treatment goals. It fosters the capacity for flexibility, creativity, tolerance of change. The skills enhanced with musical therapy can be applied to social interactions and daily routines. (American music therapy association, 2021)