For years, numerous studies have been conducted illustrating the psychological effects of music, which has led to music therapy being recognized as a valuable therapeutic approach.
What is Music Therapy?
In 1996, the World Federation of Music Therapy (WFMT) defined music therapy as the “use of music and/or its musical elements (sound, rhythm, melody, harmony) performed by a specialized music therapist with a patient or group, in a process designed to facilitate and promote communication, relationships, learning, movement, expression, organization, or other relevant therapeutic objectives, with the aim of changing and satisfying physical, emotional, mental, social, and cognitive needs.”
Thus, music therapy has been used in recent years as a therapeutic tool that has allowed for the establishment of a new form of interrelationship between the patient and the therapist, especially in cases of children with autism spectrum disorder.
This has been possible because people with autism show a greater preference, predisposition, and responsiveness to various sound stimuli when they are musical.
For example, it has been shown that children with Autism Spectrum Disorder exhibit musical behaviors such as:
- Repetition of fragments of listened songs.
- Spontaneous rhythm reproduction.
- Attraction to certain sounds, timbres, or sound sources.
- Performance of spontaneous movements to certain types of music.
Benefits of Music Therapy
The therapeutic objectives of music therapy in autistic children, according to Cora A. Leivinson, are:
- Collaborate in their process of connecting with the world around them.
- Promote the relationship with their family and with other people.
- Stimulate the most harmonious development possible by establishing new forms of emotional expression, communication, and movement.
- Develop and strengthen gross motor skills.
- Achieve better neuromotor development through functional games.
- Stimulate, generally and according to the particular problem, aspects of the child’s development such as communication, social relationship skills, or expressive and receptive language.
- Adequately structure sensoriality in their body scheme.
- Develop the acuity of the senses: haptic-visual-auditory-gustatory-olfactory.
- Stimulate the child’s rhythmic dialogue with their environment.
- Promote self-determination and creativity behaviors.
What are the Functions of a Music Therapist?
Regarding the resources available to a music therapist when carrying out a music therapy intervention, these include:
- Use of musical patterns (repetitive vocalizations, rhythms of hitting objects, echolalia…) to develop music from them.
- Use of simple songs that help to improve understanding of both verbal and non-verbal messages.
- Distraction provided by the musical stimulus that causes repetitive behaviors to decrease because the brain is occupied processing the information from the musical stimulus.
- Use of rhythmic improvisations that will allow for the release of aggression and the discovery of sounds created by themselves.
- Creation of rhythms with objects such as ropes, ribbons, sticks… to address situations of play, rhythms, scenography, or even theater.
What to Consider When Proposing Music Therapy?
However, before designing an intervention plan that includes music therapy techniques, the following aspects should be considered:
- Music is a means of rehabilitation, never the definitive treatment.
- Music can not only relax but also alter, stress, or cause displeasure.
- The therapist must possess the necessary knowledge and techniques to utilize the resources of music therapy.
- Music generates different reactions in each person, so an exhaustive knowledge of the patient is essential.
- Music possesses certain power at neurological, physical, and emotional levels, thus constituting another tool in human development.
- Knowing how to distinguish when sound is used with different forms, nuances, or timbres (melody, harmony, voice, choir, instrumentation, etc.) from when it ceases to be so and becomes noise.