Music Therapy Pocket Guide

WHAT IS MUSIC THERAPY?

Music therapy is a well-recognized clinical intervention that uses music within a therapeutic process to assist the patient in identifying and dealing with social, cognitive, emotion or physical concerns.

Additionally, a music therapist will assess the needs of a patient by the response he/she has to music played or how they respond to questions when using music to assess their mental/physical condition. They will then use the information gleaned from the assessment to design a therapeutic program.

The therapeutic intervention is tailored to the individual’s needs and is constructed to help a patient achieve her/his therapeutic goals. The musical intervention may involve: music coming from the therapist or the patient playing a musical instrument and/or singing, the patient composing music, the patient listening to or dancing/moving to a piece of music.

These interventions allow the patient to express feelings or thoughts in a more complex and multidimensional manner than with words only and can help the patient address traumatic or uncomfortable situations without the use of words.