Thanks to generous funding from The Margaret Clark Morgan Foundation, Summa Health is broadening awareness and treatment of mental health through the use of music therapy in partnership with the Akron Symphony. The Music and Mental Health program integrates music, an effective yet underutilized tool, to promote recovery in behavioral health patients. Professional musicians perform weekly in several inpatient behavioral health settings at Summa Health to help engage patients and facilitate communication.
“It is our hope that through these endeavors, we raise awareness of the commonality of human emotional suffering, the important role that it has in shaping creative musical expression and the therapeutic power of music,” said Joseph D. Varley, MD, the Jim and Vanita Oelschlager Endowed Chair in Psychiatry and Behavioral Health, and chair, Department of Psychiatry at Summa Health.
As a second part of this grant, a recent performance by Dr. Richard Kogan, renowned pianist and psychiatrist, took place at Summa Health System-Akron Campus on February 5, 2016. The grant enabled Dr. Kogan to visit Summa Health and give a lecture for Summa Health clinicians about musical genius and psychiatric illness.
For more information on Summa Health Behavioral Health Services click here.
