Music, Health, and Wellbeing

Raymond MacDonald is Professor of Music Psychology and Improvisation at Glasgow Caledonian University. After completing his PhD at the University of Glasgow, investigating therapeutic applications of music, he worked as Artistic Director for a music company, Sounds of Progress, specialising in working with people who have special needs. His ongoing research focuses on issues relating to improvisation, musical communication, music therapy, music education and musical identities. He has co-edited three texts with Dorothy Miell and David Hargreaves, Musical Identities (2002) and Musical Communication (2005) and Musical Imaginations (in press). He is currently Editor of the journal Psychology of Music and Associate Editor for The International Journal of Music Education, Jazz Research Journal and Research Studies in Music Education. As a composer and saxophonist he has recorded over 50 CDs and has toured and broadcast worldwide.Professor Kreutz is a trained musicologist with strong interest in how humans respond to music and vice versa, how music influences human cognition, emotion, and behaviour. He has published numerous articles, book chapters and co-edited three books. His contributions span different areas of music psychology with some emphasis on emotion, health, and wellbeing. His research has been supported by grants from institutions and societies including the German Research Council (DFG), British Academy and Federal Ministry for Education and Research (BMBF). He is member of the Scientific Committee of the Society für Music in Medicine.Laura Mitchell is a health psychologist specialising in the use of music in self-regulation of health, emotions and wellbeing, with particular interest in music as part of pain management. Following completion of her PhD funded by the Scottish Network for Chronic Pain Research, she has held positions as Reader at Glasgow Caledonian University in the UK and Visiting Professor at McGill University in Canada, with her research funded by the British Pain Society and Wingate Scholarships. Her current position is part of the psychological health and wellbeing research group at Bishop's University in Quebec.

• SECTION 1 INTRODUCTORY CHAPTERS; SECTION 2: COMMUNITY MUSIC AND PUBLIC HEALTH; SECTION 3 CLINICAL AND THERAPEUTIC APPLICATIONS; SECTION 4 EDUCATIONAL CONTEXTS; SECTION 5: EVERYDAY USES

I really enjoyed this book as an opportunity to learn more about a field that is almost entirely unknown to me. If the book is anything to go by, the future of research into the interplay between music, health and wellbeing promises to be very interesting indeed.