When Music is Enough

A vision for music therapy advocacy

Abstract

Human beings are inherently musical, and engagement with music is a natural component of individual and community life. When people face institutionalization, due to medical or mental health concerns, they may suddenly only be able to access musical involvement through a music therapy program. As music therapists build and expand clinical programming in a variety of institutional settings, justification of the role of music, and the profession’s existence, is often required based upon specific medical or psychotherapeutic outcomes. Within healthcare settings rooted in Western models of evidence-based medicine, patient’s musical engagement is often required to be justified based upon non-musical outcomes, and music therapists risk inadvertently constraining, and even pathologizing, patients’ relationships to music in order to adapt to these models. Drawing upon clinical examples from extensive music therapy experience in mental health and medical settings, this paper will explore a vision for music therapy advocacy that is grounded in music while remaining sensitive to the current demands and realities within Western models of healthcare. Just as music’s place within our education system must be grounded in more than music’s ability to further non-musical goals such as mathematical skills, so too must our vision for music’s place within healthcare become more expansive than a means through which to accomplish medical or psychotherapeutic aims.

Keywords

Music therapy, advocacy, institution, mental health, medicine