This article was written as a report on a three year pilot music therapy program that was started in Australia. The aim of the project was to provide short-term music therapy to families in communities where access to other services may be limited. The music therapy program was named Sing & Grow, and focused on building upon parents’ ability to relate to and respond to their child’s emotional and developmental needs. It specifically targeted families with children ages three and under.

Once again, if you have been following my blogs on the Central Ohio Music Therapy, LLC website or our Facebook page, you are familiar with my dual role as a music therapist and music educator.  Having to conduct music therapy sessions virtually (and usually with only 1 – 4 patients at the most), I was fascinated to learn what challenges music educators had with trying to teach virtually and have a full classroom!  This article looks at what music educators learned during the COVID-19 virtual learning school year in 2020 – 2021.  

Draper’s article was written just prior to the vaccine rollout and discusses the importance of getting students with developmental disabilities vaccinated.  Knowing that these students often have other health issues, the focus, as with the shut down and remote learning, was to keep everyone as safe as possible.

I was simply blown away when the presenter shared the results of this study.  I already knew that when a patient with Alzheimer’s disease listened to music that they knew, that they were often able to sing the words and it brought a smile to their face.  I had witnessed that in numerous sessions in the past, but what I didn’t know was just how much the music penetrated the brain of the patient.

In a pilot study by Fischer, Churchill, Leggieri, Vuong, Tau, Fornazzari, Thaut and Schweizer, researchers examined both musicians and non-musicians.  Investigators stated, “The purpose of our study is to examine whether a program involving listening to long-known music for 1 h[our] a day for 3 weeks results in changes in brain structure and function and corresponding improvements in global memory performance for patients with mild cognitive impairment (MCI) or early AD” (p. 820).  

When setting up the criteria for this study, research assistants met with each qualified patient and had them pass some basic tests for cognition and that they did not have any “significant medical needs” (p. 821).  Each participant had a listening list, including music that they did not know mixed with music that they identified as “well-known” to them.  Caregivers assisted with helping make sure the participant focused on the music and asked questions as directed by the research staff.

This article outlines a case study performed by researchers to find the effect of using embedded song interventions compared to verbal instruction of a 5-year-old boy diagnosed with Autism. The researchers noted that in our culture independence is highly valued by young individuals as well as for adults who provide care for them. For children with Autism, independent self-care can be inhibited by a number of factors such as motivation and meaning to the individual, habits and performance patterns, communication deficits, sensory processing, and variability of performance. These factors can lead to adults parenting or working with children with Autism maintaining their caregiver role during self-care tasks for longer periods of time than those working with typically developing children.

As a Music Therapist and a Music Educator, I find myself drawn to articles written by music educators concerning students with disabilities in their classroom.  Although music therapy is a related service under IDEA, many school districts do not employ music therapists to work with their special needs students.  Often music educators are left to grapple with the how to teach these students with varying levels of training and experience.

I had a lady come up to me today after my choir concert and share that she had a young daughter who has autism.  She asked me if I had ever heard of a certain school in the area that specializes in students with developmental disabilities.  I told her about my choir program for the older students.  (I conducted a pilot program creating a choir with three classrooms, which serve older students.)  She smiled and said her daughter loved music and wondered how she could get music therapy.  I shared some information with her on how to contact the company I work for and see if her daughter could receive individual services.  I truly hope she will follow up since she smiled as she told me what happens when her daughter hears music.

You may have heard about music therapy for individuals or groups, but have you ever wondered if music therapy could work for families? Michael Silverman’s article “Effects of Family-Based Educational Music Therapy on Acute Psychiatric Patients and their Family Member: An Exploratory Mixed-Methods Study,” explores music therapy in a family based setting for psychiatric patients. As the length of inpatient psychiatric stays are decreasing, the care and support provided by families for their loved ones are increasing. Education groups and therapy groups have been successful for families struggling with a mental health diagnosis of a loved one. These types of education groups, or psychoeducation, groups can help decrease stressors involving communication, interactions, and coping within the family environment.  

Perhaps you have heard about how music therapy can be successful with children/adolescents with behavioral and emotional problems, but do we know how effective the treatment can be? Many adolescents suffer from anxiety, depression, or other mental disorders that cause social, emotional, and behavioral problems. If not dealt with, these problems and behaviors will continue into adulthood. Music therapy has become a more recognized treatment for these individuals (especially because of their natural enjoyment of music), but studies lack in how effective the intervention can be. In “Music Therapy for Children and Adolescents with Behavioural and Emotional Problems: A Randomized Controlled Trial”, Porter, et al. attempted to find out just that.

Have you ever wondered if music therapy can help your child with behavioral difficulties? Some diagnoses (such as autism, ADHD, developmental disabilities, bipolar disorder, etc.) may come with emotional or behavioral problems that can be hard for family to deal with or manage. To date, not many large based studies address how effective music therapy can be for this population. However, Porter et al have launched a large, random control trial study “Music in mind, a randomized controlled trial of music therapy for young people with behavioural and emotional problems: study protocol.”

Most of us would agree that music and emotion go together.  What I know from personal experience is that for one person a song may have a strong emotional attachment, but for another person, the same song may not mean anything to them.  The emotional attachment may be related to past events in a person’s life and therefore it “speaks” to that person completely different from the next person.

I know many people who can work while music is playing or just enjoy having music on in the background when they are at home, in the car or working.  When I use to teach school, the teachers would turn on their radios while they worked on lesson plans.  Because I was the music teacher, you would think I would do the same thing.  Actually, I sat in silence in my classroom and only turned on music if I wanted to listen to a song briefly that I wanted to use for the next week.  I could think better if I had silence because my ears needed a break from music.  Friends have told me they can think clearer or work faster if they have music playing.  To this day, I do not understand that.  As I write this post, I am hoping that it will be quiet while I finish working.

What happens in our brain when we listen to a familiar song or piece of music?  Is it the same for everyone?  I know for me, a familiar song may bring back a certain memory or I start singing along because I just cannot help it!  For many, an emotional connection triggers endorphins, which are hormones that help you feel good.  I’ve had patients at the beginning of a session tell me that they “do not feel that great”, then after we sing and/or play a familiar song of theirs, I ask again and get a different answer.  Sometimes their pain is less or they just “feel better.”

If you are familiar with music therapy, you may know that sessions usually happen one on one with a music therapist or within a context of a group with like peers. But can music therapy be used to explore outside relationships within the therapeutic setting?  Steve Cobbett, of the United Kingdom, describes some of his music therapy work in the article, “Context and Relationships: Using the systemic approach with music therapy in work with children, adolescents, and their families.”