Jammu and Kashmir: HED, SKIMS come together to substitute music for medicine

Addressing a press conference here, principal Amar Singh College Prof Bashir Ahmad Rather said the HED and the SKIMS Bemina have decided to “jointly shoulder the responsibility decoding the conflation of music and medical sciences especially the neuro-science”.

“Role of our college will be to coordinate the project and submit the DPRs to the HED for release of grants, instruments and other equipment,” he said.

He said the Amar Singh College has been designated as the hub research centre for interdisciplinary research under “hub and spoke model of HED in collaboration with SKIMS Medical College Bemina”.

He said there is already a provision of funding in the annual budget of HED as per the NEP-2020.

“Amar Singh College shall act as a mediator between the HED and the experts involved in this research project to be rolled out in shortest period of time,” he said.

Principal investigator of the research project Dr Shazad Asim, who is also the research head at institute of mathematical science, said the project was a novel concept to diagnose the mental disorders from this concept of research methodology.

He said under the new project, doctors would be able to diagnose the anxiety and depression in patients by using different kinds of sound therapies.

“We are in collaboration with SKIMS Bemina in terms of experimentation and clinical support for this research project,” he said.

“J&K is hub of depression, anxiety and other mental disorders. The cases have increased since the outbreak of covid19. So we need to diagnose these ailments and treat them with different sound therapies,” he said.

Principal SKIMS medical college Srinagar, Dr. Riyaz Ahmad Untoo also briefed about the importance of the project. “Sound waves besides specific and unspecific sound therapies and acoustic mechanism will be utilised to diagnose various mental disorders,” he said.

“Globally, two or three countries have taken this initiative but it is a maiden project in whole country wherein music will be substitute to medicines,” he said, adding that the team of doctors at SKIMS Bemina dealing with psychiatric patients will provide database of patients of all kinds.