Health and Wellness – Supporting Mental Health and Resilience

For people living with mental illness or experiencing addiction, music can be a powerful source of healing, connection, and emotional relief. Orchestras that collaborate with therapists, crisis centers, shelters, and prisons are creating musical experiences that offer comfort, reduce stress, and support recovery. These partnerships not only provide meaningful moments for participants but also deeply resonate with musicians, fostering empathy and shared understanding through the transformative power of music.

Lima Symphony Orchestra: Healing Through Music
Responding to the Opioid Crisis

When the League’s American Orchestras Futures Fund offered the opportunity to dream big, Executive Director Elizabeth Brown-Ellis knew what the Lima Symphony needed to do. A classmate of her son had died of an opioid overdose: there was no bigger need in the community. The executive director of the local Mental Health Recovery Services Board jumped at the chance to bring live music to patients struggling with addiction. An LSO string quartet started monthly visits to a drop-in center for youth, a temporary living facility, a long-term residential facility, and Mercy Health/St. Rita’s Hospital. When word got out about the program, the local prison chaplain called. The LSO found additional funding to send an ensemble there, “and for two hours,” says Brown-Ellis, “[the inmates] closed their eyes, and they were somewhere else.”

The pandemic brought a pause to the program and a chance to reassess. Brown-Ellis trimmed the program from five sites to two, going where the impact was greatest: the hospital’s behavioral health unit, and the prison.

Music is only part of the story. Conversation throughout the performances invites patients’ participation and stresses everyone’s shared humanity. “Just by being there,” says Brown-Ellis, “we’re telling people we’re here for you; you have not been forgotten.”

“We are not music therapists,” Brown-Ellis stresses. “Music is just another tool for recovery.” She and mental health professionals have honest conversations with musicians about what’s needed. One musician reflected on their musical skills, “I didn’t realize this was what my training was for.” And musicians are getting creative. An LSO percussionist has started Drumming Up Hope, a participatory drumming circle for the prison visits.

Brown-Ellis finds it difficult to communicate the importance of this activity to Lima’s typical concertgoers, since the therapeutic nature of the string quartet’s work precludes media coverage. But when the full orchestra ventured into the prison to perform alongside a 100-member inmate chorus, featuring music composed by a former inmate—that got attention. “There’s a real sense of pride.”

More Examples of Initiatives to Support Mental Health and Resilience

Los Angeles Philharmonic: YOLA Crisis Prevention

YOLA (Youth Orchestra Los Angeles) partners with Open Paths Counseling Center for staff training in crisis prevention and understanding trauma.

Street Symphony

Street Symphony is a community of Los Angeles-based musicians creating performances, workshops, and new songs with neighbors recovering from addiction, homelessness, and incarceration.

Oregon Symphony: The Lullaby Project

“The Lullaby Project” (developed and shared by the Weill Institute of Music at Carnegie Hall) uses the creative process of songwriting to improve well-being and child bonds with parents experiencing housing insecurity and other challenging life situations. Through a partnership with a homeless shelter serving families with children, and together with musicians from the Oregon Symphony and local singer-songwriters, parents and parents-to-be create personal lullabies for their children, expressing their hopes and dreams for the future.

Johnstown Symphony Orchestra: Sound Support

Sound Support is a grief support group for ticket holders who lost a spouse or partner and have difficulty returning to the concert hall. A local therapy organization provides two trained and licensed grief therapists to lead monthly group discussions beginning with the theme and music of an upcoming concert, seeking ways the music can address their grief. This program is private and confidential; participants come through word of mouth from board, staff, and participants.

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Photo: The Lima Symphony Orchestra performs inside of an Ohio prison. “Music is therapeutic. Music unites us. It just transcends our place and the limitations of our current reality,” said the Executive Director of the Lima Symphony, Elizabeth Brown-Ellis. Bringing an experience like this to a community that is often overlooked and stereotyped gives inmates hope for the future of their rehabilitation. Photo courtesy of the Lima Symphony.