Melbourne Conservatorium of Music - Theses

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    Music and eating disorders
    Taylor, Hannah Mathilda ( 2022)
    This thesis investigates how people with eating disorders experience and engage with music. Eating disorders are severe mental health conditions that present through a distorted body image, a pre-occupation with body weight and an unhealthy relationship with food. Although eating disorders are rising in prevalence and have the highest mortality rate of any mental illness, attempts to understand their aetiology and develop effective interventions continue. A systematic literature review concluded that there have been few studies of rigorous design that directly investigate how this population use and/or experience music. An investigation of the literature revealed that music therapy is available as a treatment to eating disorder patients despite limited research to draw upon. The purpose of this thesis was to consider musical engagement in a population with eating disorders, and to examine the impact of two commonly co-occurring conditions on the musical experience: alexithymia (an inability to recognise emotions) and anhedonia (lack of pleasure). A synthesis of literature is essential for understanding possible benefits or risks of music use in this population. Findings demonstrate the potential for future research to explore how music is used by people with eating disorders and to provide more sophisticated explanations of how music is experienced by these individuals. Such information may have diagnostic implications and will be helpful in subsequently devising appropriate interventions.