Resources & references

Watch as music therapist Kelsey MacDonald provides music therapy sessions to a patient with dementia at Aberdeen Hospital and listen to testimonials from the patient's daughter and the director of the palliative care unit.

Watch how Benji and his music therapist engage together to work towards his goals targeting collaboration, communication, and social skills.

This article provides background information on visual impairments and the impact of these disorders on social connectedness, activities of daily living, mood, quality of life, and child development. Implications and potential for music therapy for visually-impaired children and adults are discussed.

 Music therapy improves the health of premature babies and boosts parental bonding.

Click here to watch a video about this article. 

This paper updates an earlier review that encouraged the music therapy community to continuing investigating the efficacy of music therapy in treatment of substance abuse. 12 studies met inclusion for this review. The most common music therapy method to be investigated was lyric analysis, followed by music and imagery methods, and then songwriting. Recommendations include suggestions for reducing bias in future studies and continued research.

This article explores the evidence-based benefits of music therapy among adults with dementia and Alzheimer’s disease. It references existing research showing how music enhances communication, cognitive functioning, physical activity, memory, reality orientation, and quality of life.

Learn more about the benefits of music therapy by seeing a music therapy experience in action 

Certified music therapist and researcher Laurel Young discusses her clinical work and research on music therapy in bereavement care and offers recommendations for future practice and research.

This reference book offers a  comprehensive look at the use of music therapy with elderly and those living with dementia based on the research and experience of experts from around the world. It can serve as a resource for caregivers and families of individuals with dementia or Alzheimer's disease and for music therapists.

Click here to see an example of how music therapy has been used in dementia care.

This article examines how music therapy is integrated into eating disorder treatments. It reviews research on music, music therapy, and eating disorders, suggesting that music therapy may be a valuable complement to systemic and family-based approaches.

This brief entry is a summary of a peer-reviewed article. It explains succinctly what is music therapy in palliative care. 

Click here to read the related research study.

The article describes an innovative method of facilitating grief resolution using precomposed music that is significant to the patient after a major loss. In this method, music is of equal importance with verbal processing as part of the overall therapeutic approach. Musical improvization is also used as a primary tool to reflect back to, and affirm for, the patient the affective content of his or her life story. 

Read a review exploring the existing evidence on the potential applications of music therapy in health care. Current evidence is highlighted, as well as existing limitations, both in research and practice. Guidelines for the development of policies supporting the integration of music therapy in health care are also discussed.