Adolescent mental health challenges such as anxiety, depression, and mood disorders have become increasingly prevalent worldwide, highlighting the urgent need for school-based emotional support. While traditional mental health education in schools tends to rely on external interventions such as counseling and crisis response, the psychological potential of regular curricular content, particularly music, is often overlooked. This study explores how music education in primary and secondary schools can serve as a meaningful form of emotional support, fostering students emotional development and psychological well-being. Grounded in theories of music psychology and educational psychology, the research examines the mechanisms through which music influences emotional states and conducts a comparative analysis of school music programs in China and the United Kingdom. The findings reveal that music education offers significant benefits beyond technical skill development, including emotional expression, stress reduction, attention regulation, and social bonding. While the United Kingdom has integrated mental health objectives systematically into its music curriculum, China continues to emphasize skill training and cultural heritage, with less attention to psychological support. This contrast illustrates the potential for Chinese education to enhance the emotional functions of music through curriculum reform, teacher training, and policy support. Despite cultural and institutional limitations, the study points to future directions involving empirical evaluation and interdisciplinary collaboration to integrate music more effectively into mental health promotion in schools.
Yijie Chen (2025) studied this question.