Breanna Gilger, senior nursing major and honors college student, creates playlist for patients with geriatric depression Tuesday in the White Library. Gilger is conducting an experiment to show music therapeutically helps with geriatric depression.
Breanna Gilger, senior nursing major and current Honors College student, did a Emporia State Undergraduate Research Project over the summer about using music therapy to help with depression in the elderly. She received approximately $2,000 of ESURP funding from the university for her study.
Gilger went to the Honors College after coming up with the idea of music helping geriatric depression. She was sitting in class and they were discussing the geriatric depression scale when she came up with the idea. The geriatric depression scale is 15 yes or no questions that help determine if the person has or could be prone to have depression.
Gilger said she thinks music can be used therapeutically to help people with geriatric depression. To start, Gilger spoke with Gary Wyatt, who helped her submit an application to ESURP. It was approved towards the end of the spring semester, and they had a lot of paperwork to get through, such as consent forms and obtaining approval from a local nursing home. Once everything had been approved they started the therapy.
Gilger started with a control group and the experimental group. The experimental group met twice a week for six weeks, and during that time she would play music that the patients liked, Gilger said.
Then, three times during each session she would administer the GDS test and record the results. She would do the same GDS test with the control group, who did not get to listen to the music. The results are not complete yet, but Gilger believes the program went well.
“Breanna is one of the most brilliant and driven peers in the class of 2019 that I know,” said Garrett VanArsdale, Gilger’s friend and graduate music student. “Her project works to combine two of her greatest interests, music and helping the elderly. It is no surprise that somebody as creative as her would come up with such a great project.”
Gilger said she would like to see the program continue and grow. She is currently trying to get the nursing home to play music in the common rooms and looking for donations of iPods and phones so they can put Spotify or Pandora accounts on them for the residents’ use, Gilger said.
Currently, Gilger has received five devices for this purpose, according to her Facebook post. In the future, she plans to work as a surgical nurse and potentially attend KU for a musical therapist degree.
Gilger’s advice for anyone wanting to take on a big research project like this is to talk to your professors. “The answer will always be no if you don’t ask,” Gilger said.