Intensifying Efforts to Understand Music and Psychological Well-being: How Federal Partnerships Have Helped Us

This article discusses three federal initiatives with potential for making significant contributions to the body of research on music and psychological well-being. Each project involves creative collaborations across US government, and in each case the National Endowment for the Arts (NEA) has played a catalytic role. The Interagency Task Force on the Arts and Human Development, a 17-member alliance of federal agencies, has prompted a National Academies workshop sponsored by the NEA and the National Institutes of Health (NIH) to explore research gaps and opportunities for studying music and art's relationship to the aging process. A prospective “music/arts module” on the National Children's Study may bring NIH and NEA researchers closer together to study music's effects on psychological well-being at the other end of the lifespan. And the NEA's commitment to cosponsor delivery of neurological music therapy at the Walter Reed National Military Medical Center will give such research a needed boost within the military health care establishment. Published 2013. This article is a U.S. Government work and is in the public domain in the USA.