According to the National Center on Family Homelessness (2017), Homelessness affects 2.5 million children annually (n.p). Children who are exposed to homelessness many times also suffer from adverse childhood experiences (ACEs) which can hinder a younger person's development cognitively, socially, and can cause health problems such as heart disease later on in life. Examples of an ACE are death of a family member, witnessing or experiencing violence, economic hardship, or having a parent with a alcohol or drug addiction. About 70,000 of children in Arizona suffer from five or more ACEs. In this project music therapy interventions such as songwriting, lyric analysis, and recreative instrument play were used to address psychosocial needs for teens at a homeless shelter. The areas of psychosocial needs addressed in the music therapy group were: group cohesion, communication, and self regulation. Objectives were set each session in an eight week program to track progress of the above goals that were created based on the needs of the clients in this setting.

As the incidence of dementia continues to rise, the need for an effective and non-invasive method of intervention has become increasingly imperative. Music therapy has exhibited these qualities in addition to relatively low implementation costs, therefore establishing itself as a promising means of therapeutic intervention. In this review, current research was investigated in order to determine its effectiveness and uncover the neurochemical mechanisms that lead to positive manifestations such as improved memory recall, increased social affiliation, increased motivation, and decreased anxiety. Music therapy has been found to improve several aspects of memory recall. One proposed mechanism involves temporal entrainment, during which the melodic structures present in music provide a framework for chunking information. Although entrainment's role in the treatment of motor defects has been thoroughly studied, its role in treating cognitive disorders is still relatively new. Musicians have also been shown to demonstrate extensive plastic changes; therefore, it is hypothesized that non-musicians may also glean some benefits from engaging in music. Social affiliation has been found to increase due to increases in endogenous oxytocin. Oxytocin has also been shown to strengthen hippocampal spike transmission, a promising outcome for Alzheimer's patients. An increase in motivation has also been found to occur due to music's ability to tap into the reward center of the brain. Dopaminergic transmission between the VTA, NAc and higher functioning regions such as the OFC and hypothalamus has been revealed. Additionally, relaxing music decreases stress levels and modifies associated autonomic processes, i.e. heart rate, blood pressure, and respiratory rate. On the contrary, stimulating music has been found to initiate sympathetic nervous system activity. This is thought to occur by either a reflexive brainstem response or stimulus interpretation by the amygdala.

Three high-school and college-level band directors were interviewed about how their ensemble students (both individually and collectively) are affected during times of tragedy and how they responded to the situation. Tragedies discussed included student deaths, school-wide incidents, national emergencies, and other instances of shared grief. Questions that guided the research were: (1) In what musical or non-musical ways do band directors aid their students in the grieving process? (2) How do band directors handle their own personal emotions, both in front of their students and privately? and (3) What resources and previous experiences have prepared band directors to handle a grief situation, and what additional methods may have prepared them more effectively? Interviews were qualitatively analyzed for common themes and compared with literature related to responding to student grief. Four main themes emerged from the study: (1) contextual factors affect stakeholders' responses, (2) band directors make many decisions when handling student grief, (3) band directors recall responses of the wider community, and (4) band directors experience personal impact. Implications for the field included suggestions for band directors to consider non-musical student needs in their orientations to teaching, for the band director community to communicate about student grief situations, and for social workers and administrators to ensure that classroom teachers receive training and information on how to help students with grief. Recommendations for further research included replicating the study with other demographic areas, examining the students' experiences themselves, conducting a survey-based study about the topic, and exploring the role mentors have in shaping band directors' philosophies on this topic.