Music therapy for palliative care: A realist review

Music therapy has experienced a rising demand as an adjunct therapy for symptom management among palliative care patients. We conducted a realist review of the literature to develop a greater understanding of how music therapy might benefit palliative care patients and the contextual mechanisms that promote or inhibit its successful implementation.
We searched electronic databases (CINAHL, Embase, Medline, and PsychINFO) for literature containing information on music therapy for palliative care. In keeping with the realist approach, we examined all relevant literature to develop theories that could explain how music therapy works.
A total of 51 articles were included in the review. Music therapy was found to have a therapeutic effect on the physical, psychological, emotional, and spiritual suffering of palliative care patients. We also identified program mechanisms that help explain music therapy's therapeutic effects, along with facilitating contexts for implementation.
Music therapy may be an effective nonpharmacological approach to managing distressing symptoms in palliative care patients. The findings also suggest that group music therapy may be a cost-efficient and effective way to support staff caring for palliative care patients. We encourage others to continue developing the evidence base in order to expand our understanding of how music therapy works, with the aim of informing and improving the provision of music therapy for palliative care patients.

Meeting art with art : arts-based methods enhance researcher reflexivity in research with mental health service users

This paper presents a rationale for arts-based practices in music therapy research, and provides an example of using ABR techniques in research. Arts-based materials are increasingly demonstrated to have the capacity to extend processes of reflexivity and analysis in a range of qualitative health research studies. By comparison, music therapy research studies have rarely employed arts-based methods or techniques. There is a need for more studies in music therapy that employ arts-based research to demystify and elaborate a wider range of creative approaches within music therapy inquiry. In the study described in this paper, ABR was used to reflect on the contribution of a service user in a community mental health context who participated in a focus group about his experiences of music therapy. ABR was found to offer a creative way to engage service users, and to deepen and extend the researcher's reflexivity when responding to materials created by research participants.

Paths of professional development in music therapy: training, professional identity and practice

Music therapy is listed as a profession in the EU Regulated Professions Database. This has assisted the next steps towards recognition in relevant countries and regions. The author’s experience as an academic leader in music therapy training over more than two decades is used to reflect on the profession of music therapy within Europe through interrogation of concepts underpinning professional identity, training, and professional practice. Potential tensions between recognition and regulation of healthcare professions are presented and discussed. As all practice takes place in context, balancing training needs between techniques and skills, systemic national and regional policy, and institutional knowledge is crucial. Achieving this balance is not easy but is key to successful growth of practitioner knowledge, seeding student’s curiosity about context and systems from the dawn of training.

Conceptualizing music therapy: five areas that frame the field

New students of music therapy soon find that the most common inquiry about their field of study is “What is music therapy?” They may also be asked questions such as “Does that work?” Even experienced practitioners in the field can find these questions annoyingly routine in meeting new colleagues. In answering these questions, providing a definition of music therapy is important. There are multiple constructs through which the functions and capacities of music therapy can be usefully discussed.

"Music therapy helped me get back doing": perspectives of music therapy participants in mental health services

BACKGROUND: Mental health service development internationally is increasingly informed by the collaborative ethos of recovery. Service user evaluation of experiences within music therapy programs allows new phenomena about participation in services to be revealed that might otherwise remain unnoticed. OBJECTIVE: The aim of this study was to demonstrate how asking service users about their experience of music therapy can generate useful information, and to reflect upon the feedback elicited from such processes in order to gain a deeper understanding of how music therapy is received among service users in mental health. METHODS: Six mental health service users described their experiences of music therapy in one or two individual interviews. Transcripts of interviews were analyzed using the procedures and techniques of Interpretative Phenomenological Analysis. RESULTS: Interviews with mental health service users provided rich, in-depth accounts reflecting the complex nature of music therapy participation. Super-ordinate themes refer to the context in which music therapy was offered, the rich sound world of music in music therapy, the humanity of music therapy, and the strengths enhancing opportunities experienced by service users. CONCLUSIONS: Participants indicated that they each experienced music therapy in unique ways. Opinions about the value of music therapy were revealed through an interview process in which the researcher holds an open attitude, welcoming all narrative contributions respectfully. These findings can remind practitioners of the importance of closely tuning into the perspectives and understandings of those who have valuable expertise to share about their experience of music therapy services in mental health.

The impact of relaxing music on insomnia-related thoughts and behaviours

Insomnia is a pervasive problem involving poor sleep quality and quantity. Previous research has suggested that music listening can help alleviate insomnia, but exactly how music helps sleep problems has not been determined. A greater understanding of these processes could help practitioners to design more effective music-based insomnia treatments. This randomised controlled trial was designed to assess the influences of nightly music listening on the sleep-related thoughts and behaviours described in Harvey’s (2002) cognitive model of insomnia maintenance. University students, including a range of good and poor sleepers, were randomly assigned to a music listening group or a control group and were assessed before and after a two-week music listening intervention. Measures included a range of self-report scales, each assessing an element of Harvey’s cognitive model. During the intervention, the music listening group was asked to listen to provided music for at least 20 minutes each night. The control group was asked to maintain their regular nightly routines. Results indicated that the music listening group significantly improved on most of the factors theorised to influence sleep quality, although their actual sleep quality did not significantly improve. The control group did not change significantly on any measures. The results of this study suggest that music listening can have positive impacts on a range of factors theorised to influence sleep quality. However, as the music was not shown to actually improve sleep quality, Harvey’s cognitive model explanation of music’s effect on sleep quality may require further investigation.

Research Protocol: A Randomized Controlled Trial of Functional Family Therapy: An Early Intervention Foundation (EIF) Partnership between Croydon Council and Queen's University Belfast

The paper presents a protocol for ‘A Randomized Controlled Trial of Functional Family Therapy (FFT): An Early Intervention Foundation (EIF) Partnership between Croydon Council and Queen's University Belfast’. The protocol describes a trial that uses FFT as an alternative intervention to current use of the youth justice system and local authority care with the aim of reducing crime/recidivism in young people referred to Croydon Council. The trial will take place over a period of 36 months and will involve up to 154 families. Croydon Council will employ a team of five Functional Family Therapists who will work with families to promote effective outcomes. The Centre for Effective Education at Queen’s University Belfast will act as independent evaluators of outcomes for families and young people. The work is supported from the United Kingdom Economic & Social Research Council/Early Intervention Foundation Grant Number ES/M006921/1.

Sad music as a means for acceptance-based coping

Self-identified sad music (SISM) is often listened to when experiencing sad life situations. Research indicatesthat the most common reason people give for listening to SISM is “to be in touch with or express feelings ofsadness”. But why might this be the case? We suggest that one reason people choose to listen to sad musicwhen feeling sad is to accept aversive situations. We tested if SISM is associated with acceptance copingand consolation. We hypothesized that SISM relates to acceptance-based coping via the recognitionand identification of emotional states, and that people will report more acceptance from SISM than selfidentifiedhappy music when seeking consolation. In Study 1, participants recalled how happy or sadthe music sounds that they normally listen to for consolation, and if they listen to this music to gainacceptance of negative moods and situations. In Study 2, participants reported their goals when listeningto sad music during a recalled time in which they experienced an adverse life situation and whether thislead to acceptance. Study 1: People reported that they were more likely to listen to sad music than happymusic when seeking consolation, though they preferred happy music in general. Listening to SISM (butnot self-identified happy music) when seeking consolation was associated with acceptance of both anegative situation and the associated negative emotions. Additionally, seeking to deal with emotions wasassociated with both SISM listening (for consolation) and acceptance. Study 2: Listening to SISM to get intouch with and express affect was the most important self-regulatory strategy (of six examined) throughwhich acceptance was recalled to be achieved. Experiencing adverse situations or seeking consolation,people report that listening to SISM is associated with acceptance coping (through the re-experiencing ofaffect). Implications for music therapy and theories of emotional coping are discussed.

The effects of a designer music intervention on patients' anxiety, pain, and experience of colonoscopy: a short report on a pilot study.

There is a controversy on whether listening to music before or during colonoscopy reduces anxiety and pain and improves satisfaction and compliance with the procedure. This study aimed to establish whether specifically designed music significantly affects anxiety, pain, and experience associated with colonoscopy. In this semirandomized controlled study, 34 patients undergoing a colonoscopy were provided with either muted headphones (n = 17) or headphones playing the investigator-selected music (n = 17) for 10 minutes before and during colonoscopy. Anxiety, pain, sedation dose, and overall experience were measured using quantitative measures and scales. Participants' state anxiety decreased over time (P < .001). However, music did not significantly reduce anxiety (P = .441), pain scores (P = .313), or midazolam (P = .327) or fentanyl doses (P = .295). Despite these findings, 100% of the music group indicated that they would want music if they were to repeat the procedure, as compared with only 50% of those in the nonmusic group wanting to wear muted headphones. Although no significant effects of music on pain, anxiety, and sedation were found, a clear preference for music was expressed, therefore warranting further research on this subject.

Youth Festival Music Performance : Deception Bay

Research Background - Young people with negative experiences of mainstream education often display low levels of traditional academic achievement. These young people tend to display considerable cultural and social resources developed through their repeated experiences of adversity. Education research has a duty to provide these young people with opportunities to showcase, assess and translate their social and cultural resources into symbolic forms of capital. This creative work addresses the following research question. How can educators develop disengaged teenager's social and cultural capital through live music performances? Research Contribution - These live music performances afford the young participants opportunities to display their artistic, technical, social and cultural resources through a popular cultural format. In doing so they require education institutions to provide venues that demonstrate the skills these young people acquire through flexible learning environments. The new knowledge derived from this research focuses on the academic and self confidence benefits for disengaged young people using festival performances as authentic learning activities. Research Significance - This research is significant because it aims to maximise the number of tangible outcomes related to a school-based arts project. The young participants gained technical, artistic, social and commercial skills during this project. This performance led to more recording and opportunities to perform at other youth festivals in SE QLD. Individual performances were distributed and downloaded via creative commons licences at the Australian Creative Resource Archive. It also contributed to their certified qualifications and acted as pilot research data for two competitively funded ARC grants (DP0209421 & LP0883643)