Music therapy used to help bipolar patients

The Journal-Star of Lincoln, Nebraska reports on Dr. Galina Mindlin, a New York psychiatrist,
who records brain waves and converts them to mood-altering musical notes, which are later transferred to a CDs for patients with bipolar to play and help with their moods. Brain music therapy was developed in 1991 by a physician at the Moscow Medical Academy.

Dr. Mindlin uses software to make brain waves sound like any number of 120 different instruments and then programs them like a piano. “People who feel restless can use the ‘relaxation’ file (part of the CD) to give an emotional down,” Dr. Mindlin tells The Journal-Star. For patients already feeling too far down, she adds, “they can use the ‘activation’ file” on the CD to bring them up.

Dr. Mindlin, 46, was born and trained in Russia. Besides her private practice, she teaches at Columbia University and is a supervising attending physician in psychiatry at St. Luke’s Roosevelt Hospital in New York City.