Topic Proposal

Tyran Hunt

COMM695

February 28th, 2022

Guidance Through Music

Effects of Christian or gospel music on the people’s positive emotions.

Christian music is music, which is drawn and inspired from Christian tradition. It is written to either express communal or personal belief regarding the life and faith of Christians. Gospel, church music, worship music and hymnals are all part of Christian media, which include Christian music that supports various Christian music styles. The motivation for choosing Christian music topic is because music continues to play an important role in people’s life today. In addition, religious music can be referred to as a way of individuals to express their feelings and according to research; Christian music has a psychological effect on individuals through eliciting different thought patterns as well as emotions (Rogers, K., 2019).

Personally, listening to gospel songs has been my coping strategy while experiencing stressful life events such as loss. I lost a lot of people close to me in 2021 and during that time I was consistently looking for things to help me deal with that pain. I always find peace by turning to specific gospel songs, which evoke instructive praise and thanksgiving. It always satisfies the need I’m searching for. If I am upset, frustrated, discouraged, or lost, the gospel music always has a positive impact on my emotions. In addition, these songs give me a comfort feeling, they strengthen and uplift me as well as enable me to have the ability to endure struggles. For instance, Fall 209 I suffered from deep depression. When I started listening to gospel music more often, I was able to overcome my depressive symptoms compared to before. For this reason, I need to research on this topic because the use of religious music such as the gospel songs have not been majorly researched as well as considered. It is meaningful to me because I think religious music can be incorporated into spiritual care interventions. This is important because it might enhance mental health intervention cultural relevance in various age groups thus enabling me to help various people with mental health issues.

As such, there are specific questions, which I would like to explore in this topic. These questions include, how gospel songs can transform a user's mood from negative to a more positive, how can Christian or religious songs be incorporated as a self-care and self-comforting strategy into management of mental health and finally, what are the benefits of using Christian music on the interventions using music for therapy.

Reference

Rogers, K., Jörg, M., & Weber, M. (2019). Effects of background music on risk-taking and general player experience. In Proceedings of the Annual Symposium on Computer-Human Interaction in Play (pp. 213-224).