Resources & references

When Benji was born, he was like any other child... at around eighteen months his speech development started to regress and his parents noticed changes in his behaviour.

Benji was diagnosed with Autism Spectrum Disorder at the age of two and a half years old... and so the challenges for Benji and his family were now clear. Realising the long road ahead, Benji's parents were determined to give their son every opportunity for success in life. His music therapy journey begins here...  

This scoping review explores Bruscia’s (1987) clinical techniques for improvisational music therapy as they relate to music therapy in autism research to determine the most commonly used clinical techniques in music therapy with clients with autism. The work was undertaken as a preliminary step in a pilot study to explore how the techniques can be represented in terms of individual ways of playing, musical relationships; and how the use of the techniques impacts the participant’s experience of musical connection, influence, and expression

Article and video showcase work by music therapist Laurie Perez with a teenage student with cerebral palsy, demonstrating the use of song writing in a school setting with children with disabilities

Concordia University produced the "Children's Right to Music" documentary.  The videos included in this documentary introduce music therapists interacting and using music with groups of children that are autistic or with some disabilities, in schools or community settings adapted to support their development and meet their needs.

This paper describes a Performing Arts Program, representative of Community Music Therapy. Adults with developmental disabilities participated in community-based performing ensembles — instrumental/vocal groups and American Sign Language (ASL) music interpretation groups. The Performing Arts Program was successful in fostering community engagement, social networking, and friendship building. Implications for the changing trends in music therapy are discussed.

The purpose of this two-part study was to confirm the relationship between dyadic drum playing and social skills and to further develop a rhythm-mediated music therapy intervention for improving the social skills of children with ASD. Participants showed greater engagement in joint action following the intervention. This study supports potential benefit of the rhythm-mediated intervention using dyadic drum playing and provides preliminary evidence strengthening its use in the social domain for individuals with ASD.

This article suggests a provisional paradigm shift from disability as pathology, to disability as neurodiversity: this has the potential to productively resituate the epistemological orientations of music therapy, both as a field of inquiry and a domain of practice. Drawing from their own work on the ethnomusicology of autism, as well as from research and writings in disability studies and autistic self-advocacy, they propose that the relativistic foundations of ethnomusicology offer a potentially useful alternative and complement to the principally treatment-directed foundations of music therapy.

This research examines the potential benefit of a music therapy social skills development program to improve social skills and academic performance of school-aged children with limited resources, in an afterschool program.
 

This article examines as a clinical report two years of an ongoing music therapy journey with a young woman with autism. The different phases of the music therapy process are investigated from a relational point of view, explaining the therapeutic choices made by the therapist. including the application of theory of "Forms of vitality".

 Music Therapist Jodi Winnwalker shares the connective and healing power of music

This article examines the use of the non-verbal voice in music therapy with children with severe learning disabilities, complex needs and autism. Recent literature on the use of the voice in music therapy is summarised and links are made between the aims of music therapy and those of special educational establishments. Theories regarding the voice and the self, and the important connection between body awareness and emotion as precursors to learning are referred to, particularly in relation to learning disability.

This mixed-methods pilot study investigated whether nine Neurologic Music Therapy (NMT)® sessions via telehealth would improve motor and attention skills in autistic children. The improvements in motor skills and positive caregiver and therapist views of telehealth indicate that NMT motor interventions administered via telehealth are a promising avenue of therapeutic support for movement skill development in autistic children.