Music Therapy with Medically Involved Children

Music Therapy with Medically Involved Children:

When a child is diagnosed with a serious illness they are confronted with a multitude of stressors and challenges. Hospitalization can be dramatic and traumatizing to both the child and the family. The child may be overwhelmed with confusing sensory input and emotional reactions while experiencing acute physical symptoms due to the illness or the beginning of treatment. In the long term, a child's normal pace of development may be challenged or interrupted by the rigors of treatment. Regression is a common response in children who are confronted with acute distress. Further, the impact of the illness extends beyond the patient and affects the family on a variety of levels. One of the primary goals of intervention is to help each family cope as effectively as possible in both the short and long term. Additionally, with a diagnosis of a life threatening illness, death of the patient is a possibility. This final stage of the illness introduces its own clinical challenges, including anticipatory grief and bereavement issues for siblings and parents. How a family deals with this process can have long lasting effects on relationships and daily functioning.

Music therapy is useful throughout the treatment process in meeting the changing needs of the child and the myriad challenges of illness. Active music making and improvisation provide the foundation for therapeutic contact from which relationships can be developed and specific needs addressed. Music therapy can stimulate a child's natural impulses toward development and engagement and restore their motivation to play and interact with their environment.

The dynamic nature of improvisation is ideal for use in the procedure room where the needs of the moment change suddenly and frequently. Music can be used to support and empower a child during an IV insertion, lumbar puncture or other painful medical procedure. Improvised songs offer avenues for processing a child's experience directly or metaphorically and can be an effective medium for addressing painful issues.

Music has been used with children who are dying to foster a sense of shared meaningful experience for the families and to offer opportunities to say good bye. Even in the face of physical deterioration, weakness or semi-consciousness, these sessions can offer a vital means of expression. Additionally, siblings have written songs about their unique experiences as a brother or sister of a seriously ill child while bereaved siblings have used songwriting effectively to convey their sense of loss and recount their experience of the death.

Nothing can eradicate the intensity and potential trauma of this life event. But, music therapy can be effective in helping children to cope with these challenges. Within an environment that appears sterile and potentially threatening, sparks of life can be felt and a child’s natural impulse toward playfulness, spontaneity and joy can heard.