Resources & references

Music is now being used as medicine at the Foothills Medical Centre intensive care unit in Calgary, helping everyone from palliative care patients to stroke victims.

This video shows work by music therapist Carolyn Williams with children at Sick Kids Medical Hospital, in Toronto. Parents talk about the impact that music therapy has had on the development and the recovery of their child, while the music therapist comments on the actions and reactions of the children in the video. 

 Presentation by Tanya Lavoie, certified music therapist, working at the Montreal Children's Hospital.

 An individual who suffered from polio as a child described the impact of music therapy on his recovery over the years.

 This article discusses the positive benefits on well-being of adding music therapy to kangaroo care, which stresses the importance of skin to skin touch for preterm infants.

 The purpose of the current investigation was to examine the efficacy of a music therapy protocol on mood states and levels of group cohesiveness in adult oncology patients. Participants took part in "music making" sessions (where the mechanism for change included the process of making music) and "music responding" sessions (where the mechanism included the process of responding to music). 

This systematic review and meta-analysis of randomized controlled trials in burn patients was performed to determine the effect of music during treatments. In summary, a positive correlation was found between treatments including music interventions and pain alleviation, anxiety relief, and heart rate reduction in burn patients. However, additional high-quality studies with carefully considered music interventions for burn patients are still needed.