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Mental illness is often invisible to the eye. It feels lonely and heartbreaking. Everyone deserves healing. The Orpheus Institute works to understand and apply the effects of music and imagery on the brain in relieving mental and emotional suffering.

We train, support, and partner globally with mental health practitioners to help achieve faster resolution and reduce symptoms by integrating a technique that gently decodes and helps release human trauma. The Catharsis Application Program is a new and powerful way to treat emotional and mental health conditions. It is a unique and powerful combination of structured music, creative expression and projective tests that assist patients in exploring their emotions and feelings. Its application can range from the simple request to reduce stress to the patient who wants to engage in deep psychotherapy. The process can be applied across many mental health challenges and conditions.

Traditional treatment for PTSD in refugee children or veterans due to war, conflict, disaster or dramatic personal experience does not work for everyone. The expression of emotions is a key component, regardless of culture, gender, or geography in resolving trauma on a deep level. Treatment that encourages a personal reconnection with the world of symbols and images has a powerful capacity to restore a psyche disrupted by trauma.

PTSD Treatment in Children and Adolescents We all have a moral responsibility to safeguard the health & wellbeing of children around the world. We must stand up and embrace the causes impacting children. If nothing is done, the consequences on our safety and the global health and wealth of the world is going to be a major concern for everyone…

PTSD Treatment for Veterans "Over the past 5 years, the Veterans Health Administration (VHA) has made significant progress in expanding the availability of complementary and integrative health (CIH) services to veterans, with a focus on the use of these approaches for treatment of pain and mental health conditions.

See how Anna-Maria, 55 years old, rebuilt herself by becoming aware of multiple traumatic life events experienced during her childhood Anna Maria's has been a psychologist for over 30 years. Her entire journey as a therapist was built on the vital need to repair the childhood traumas she experienced and which she was never able to integrate as a child. Gradually and gently the CAP process helped her to cope with her own fragility when forgotten memories and repressed emotions emerged and gave her the ability to examine the pieces of her life story with compassion. It allowed her, for the first time in her life, to put image and words to her own suffering.

Giving those who are aging who have dementia or another disorienting condition a way to verbally communicate effectively. Relieving anxiety and agitation can reduce aggression behaviors, and reduces the need for mood-altering medications. Helping people to process grief, strengthen self-image, and embrace an acceptance of change in living circumstance or environment. CAP is also a powerful supportive formula to relieve caregiver stress and enrich communication and family life.

A release of painful emotions caused by the diagnosis of Dementia/Alzheimer's Disease — Ron, 80 years old

Ron can perform all ADL’s (Activities of daily living) with minimal assistance. He benefited from CAP therapeutic group sessions with great success at Opica, an adult day care center. The goal of this support group was to offer emotional support, cognitive stimulation, and helps maintain social skills. According to Ron, the positive aspect of the CAP session, was that it permitted him to give more space to his emotions. He loved the music and this process of drawing while listening to music interested him greatly. He was able to easily connect to his emotions and express them on his drawing paper without being worried about the result. He remembered a feeling of well-being after each drawing. This process stimulated his desire to live. He said that he even dared to speak of hope.

Stuttering in children or adults, language retardation, voice disorders, muteness and other speech challenges often have emotional origins or causes or consequences. Integrating CAP into speech therapies helps improve verbal expression, can relieve or totally resolve stuttering, calms communication fears and provides a platform for family dialog or gaining personal power.

“My speech problem was completely settled / solved - I felt full of will to take charge and better manage my life. I learned to love myself.” — Marie, age 43

Depression and anxiety bring with them physical symptoms such as fatigue, sleeplessness, weight loss or gain, as well as the daily emotional suffering from sadness, hopelessness, anger and irritability, or low energy. The cause is sometimes recent or long-ago trauma or abuse that is unresolved or repressed. CAP allows those suffering from depression or anxiety to gently explore the painful areas of the past leading to emotional reconstruction and liberation from the state of depression or of heightened anxiety.

“… Finally I’ve reached the core - I am at the heart of the problem…tears are streaming down my face. Painful experiences… I am exorcising that which suffocates, engulfs, and controls me. It is as if this music has cleaned and pacified all of my past so that I can move on.” — Nicole Cler - Nurse

A deep work of liberation from old traumas that caused depression — Lucienne - 35 years

Lucienne is hospitalized for depressive syndrome with adynamia (very intense fatigue with general exhaustion of the body). She has suffered many traumas since childhood (physical and verbal abuse) that she has never really treated and is entering a phase of her life where she questions everything. CAP allowed her to gently explore the painful areas of her past for a spectacular reconstruction, and an exit from the depressive state. She regained energy and a new life project after she was discharged from the hospital.

Lucienne - Assessment: “I was able to express myself outside of words, outside of others, to yell, to scream, to be happy and to feel all of that. I was able to speak to myself in total security (even if it was painful).”

CAP creates opportunities to understand and connect with the emotional or relationships component of a wide variety of behavioral issues, including eating disorders, chronic anxiety, violence and aggression, and others. Creating a safe and supportive environment optimizes treatment programs that address behavioral and emotional problems. CAP gently accesses emotions that block the healing process. With CAP, therapists are able to help people discover inner strength, self-esteem, stimulate the desire to communicate with others and help accelerate feelings of well-being and acceptance of changes needed for growth.

“This process relaxed my anxiety and my brain... enough for what was really subconsciously in my soul to emerge. I look back and I said: "Wow... It's the most I have discovered about myself.” — Gina, Clinical Director

CAP serves as a potent assessment tool. It offers an enhancement to personalized treatment addressing individual behavioral and emotional trauma, which underlies many causes of delinquency. This process equips young people with learning how to express feelings other than anger, developing one’s own interests and friendships, becoming accountable for his/her feelings and behaviors and to discover inner strength and self-esteem.

Other case studies

We are a nonprofit educational organization dedicated to empowering people and communities to realize their full potential through the transformative power of music and art.

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