Art Hats in Renaissance City by Lee Renee Foong Ling

Author:Lee, Renee Foong Ling
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: World Scientific Publishing Company
Published: 2015-04-10T04:00:00+00:00

Case in Point: What Is Progress in Music Therapy?

Other clients have not made their musical liking quite as obvious as J. I am recalling another client, N, from a special education setting. I could not really tell whether he enjoyed the sessions if not for his dedicated mother, who tracked her son’s every blink and breath. She told me that if he did not like something he would frown. By the time I saw him, he was wheelchair-bound and increasingly unresponsive due to his progressive physical deterioration. He needed physical assistance to play instruments and to move his hands. He did not resist, and I hardly saw him frown during our time together. His mother and teachers told me that he liked the sessions. His lack of obvious responses led me to ask what, if at all, the therapy did for him. Did he “progress” in music therapy?

Typically, progress is defined as an improvement. Now, it is important to also look at how music therapists state therapeutic goals and objectives.

Music therapy is a systematic process of intervention aimed at promoting health using musical experiences within the context of a therapist-client relationship (my modified version of Bruscia’s widely-used definition of music therapy).18 Goals generally point to a direction of “improving” some aspect of health, for example, physical or cognitive functioning. For some clients who have degenerative conditions, physical maintenance goals are pertinent. Hence, progress is made when functioning is maintained. It is important to note that music therapists also focus on quality of life, without which life may not be worth living for some of our clients and patients who face bad news or overwhelming obstacles every day. And of course, the goal is to “improve quality of life”, which then the music therapist might track, for example, by having the client report on his or her perceived quality of life using a rating scale.

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.