Resources & references

This thesis details a qualitative study on music therapy process resulting in the new concept of musico-relational competence. The project began with an exploration of music processes in the context of outpatient adult psychiatry. An ethnographic and ethnomusicological approach to the analysis of the video data (including music analysis) is used, focusing on the meaning making process of participants in the study.

This video presents a group music therapy session in Spanish for older adults with Alzheimer’s disease. It includes active music therapy experiences that address various therapeutic goals such as physical movement, cognitive abilities, interpersonal skills, and emotional expression.

Learn more about the benefits of music therapy for individuals with dementia and Alzheimer's disease

Learn more about music therapy in Spanish

This video (in Spanish) includes an interview of Dr. Mark Ettenberger who works as a music therapist in Colombia. He explains what music therapist is, who can benefit, how it can be applied, and what are its therapeutic benefits.

In this video (in Spanish), Sheila Pereiro, a music therapist in Spain, shares about her experiences working with diverse populations of various ages and needs. She describes how music helped her clients express themselves, connect with others, find healing, and enhance their quality of life.

Les Impatients is an organization that helps people who have mental health problems, offering art-based services. With Dany Bouchard, a certified music therapist, and people participating in his group music therapy sessions, the reporter Alexandre Courteau explored this discipline that is still not very well known. After one hour of musical improvisation, some participants accepted to share how music therapy has changed their life.

In 1997, a music therapy program was first piloted in a community mental health clubhouse and six months later expanded to five community mental health group homes, in British Columbia, Canada. An article published in 2000 described the predominantly song-based approach of that program and documented the participant's evaluation of it, concluding that the client-centred empowerment model of consumer inclusiveness appeared to contribute significantly to the rehabilitative effect of the program. In this article published in 2020, the authors report on the current status of the program, including new data.

This video features Anna Lacourse, certified music therapist (Quebec) who presents her work with a patient at the Saint-Raphaël Palliative Care Home and Day Center (Montreal). The patient gives a testimonial and describes the benefits he has experienced through music therapy.

The objective of this phenomenological research is to document the experience of music therapists practicing in mental health with adults receiving services in community and hospital settings in Quebec. Reflections, recommendations, research ideas, and the results of interviews are presented here. It is hoped that this work will help to foster the use of music therapy practices in mental health, an innovative and creative approach.

This book is available in an official English edition by the Publisher.

This book, written by music therapist Guylaine Vaillancourt, is divided in two parts. This book is intended to make parents, educators and care-givers aware of how music and music therapy can benefit children. It also explains how the purposeful use of music by music therapy professionals can restore, maintain or enhance physical and psychological well-being of children.

See the record of the book Music, Music Therapy and Child Development
 

This research article offers rational for protocolized music teletherapy (MTT) for older adults with Alzheimer’s disease. MTT made music therapy services more accessible and was effective in addressing neuropsychiatric symptoms.

Entrainment is defined by a temporal locking process in which one system’s motion or signal frequency entrains the frequency of another system. This process is a universal phenomenon that can be observed in physical (e.g., pendulum clocks) and biological systems (e.g. fire flies). However, entrainment can also be observed between human sensory and motor systems. The function of rhythmic entrainment in rehabilitative training and learning was established for the first time by Thaut and colleagues in several research studies in the early 1990s. It was shown that the inherent periodicity of auditory rhythmic patterns could entrain movement patterns in patients with movement disorders (see for a review: Thaut et al, 1999). Physiological, kinematic and behavioral movement analysis showed very quickly that entrainment cues not only changed the timing of movement but also improved spatial and force parameters. Mathematical models have shown that anticipatory rhythmic templates as critical time constraints can result in the complete specification of the dynamics of a movement over the entire movement cycle, thereby optimizing motor planning and execution. Furthermore, temporal rhythmic entrainment has been successfully extended into applications in cognitive rehabilitation and speech and language rehabilitation, and thus become one of the major neurological mechanisms linking music and rhythm to brain rehabilitation. These findings provided a scientific basis for the development of Neurologic Music Therapy.

After 35 years in the field of information technology followed by some time in politics, Suzanne Caron became a music therapist and founded the National Music Therapy Institute. Its mission is to raise awareness of and facilitate access to music therapy. A number of steps had to be completed before the dream of launching this Institute could become a reality —a process that demonstrated the importance of a determined, flexible, and creative approach. The COVID-19 pandemic— a tragedy in many respects—led the Institute to explore music therapy online for autistic people and family caregivers, and to develop training that would facilitate the transition for music therapists across Canada. The future looks promising for this Institute, whose story has yet to unfold.