NEW YORK — It’s often said that music has the power to calm the wildest of spirits. Now, it seems that this age-old belief holds more truth than ever, as doctors are uncovering music’s profound impact on tackling depression and other mental health challenges.

Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center recently participated in a groundbreaking study to explore how cancer patients might benefit from music therapy. To the medical team’s surprise, the results showed that music therapy can be just as effective as traditional methods like cognitive behavioral therapy or talk therapy.

The research, known as the Melody Study, involved pairing patients with music therapists over a seven-week period. This trial included a range of activities, from the passive experience of listening to music to the more engaging process of creating music themselves.

New York DJ Cynthia Malaran, a breast cancer survivor, shared her transformative experience with the program. “After my double mastectomy, I felt immobilized. But with music, I could lift my arms and move like this, and it felt like, ‘Oh, I forgot this even happened!’” Malaran expressed. “When you can forget, even for just three minutes, what has happened to you – that’s a victory.”

“After my double mastectomy, I felt frozen. But when it came to music, I could raise my arms and go like this and feel like, ‘Oh, I forgot this even happened!’ And when you can forget, even for three minutes this has happened to you – that’s a win,” says Malaran.

Her therapist Camila Casaw remembers making a breakthrough with Malaran during humming exercises. She says, “That was something that was almost unlocked in her brain.”

Malaran says creativity began to flow more easily because “that vibration, that sound makes things percolate to the top. So I started putting words down, like ‘stressed, anxiety. And then random things like ‘flowers.’”

The result was an hypnotic, introspective song that’s unique to Malaran’s own experience and feelings.