What even is Music Therapy?

This is a good question, because it's both easy and impossible to answer at once. Music has been used therapeutically since the dawn of time but that doesn't necessarily mean that Music Therapy has existed for all that long. The Australian Music Therapy Association (AMTA) covers the history of Music Therapy in Australia in great detail on this page - https://www.austmta.org.au/about-us/amta-history/ so we won't get into it here. On the home page of this website, I wrote that "Music therapy is an evidence-based allied health practice that targets an individual or group's non-musical goals through co-created music-based activities". It might help to break this down a bit - it's pretty formal and full of jargon. In this context, "evidence-based" refers to the expansive bank of research available that provides efficacy for music therapy practices - i.e., music therapy practice is informed by valid scientific research, the experiences of the participant and the experiences of the practitioner.

While "allied-health practices" are yet to have an agreed upon definition, allied health practitioners are understood to be health professionals working in a field other than dentistry, nursing or medicine (AHPA, 2024). Other allied-health practitioners include psychologists, counsellors and psychotherapists, occupational therapists, physiotherapists, speech therapists, arts therapists, audiologists - the list continues. Music Therapists are proud to be listed as a part of the allied health team.

"Non-musical goals" are the signposts that give RMTs direction, and all interventions (or activities) are planned to target these goals. The goals should be created in collaboration with the participant or their family/guardians if more appropriate. These could be as straightforward, or easily measurable as "increasing fine motor (perhaps finger dexterity) in the left hand" but they can also be tangential or abstract as "facilitate and strengthen self-concept" or "increase self-confidence". The goals always depend on the needs of the participant. The 'non-musical' aspect simply refers to them being seperate from musical goals - learning to play the guitar may result in an increase in self confidence, but in this instance 'self confidence' is the non musical goal, and learning the guitar is the musical goal. It is also important to note that there are many goals that can be targeted by one particular intervention - in the same example as above, learning the guitar is likely to also increase fine motor skills in the left hand - perhaps useful for ADL like writing, cooking, typing etc. "Music-based activities" are the vehicle that RMTs use to target the 'non-musical goals'. These activities vary as widely as music can, and are often thought of in four separate methods - recreative, improvisational, compositional and receptive (Bruscia, 2013). The method(s) utilized in music therapy sessions aim to target the goals in a way that should also enjoyable for the participant - for example, it would make little sense to use Slayer's 1986 seminal album 'Reign in Blood' as music listening (or receptive) intervention aimed at increasing dyadic interaction between mother/child dyads. I could perhaps see an argument for it but I digress. "Co-creativity" is an element that seems to be under examined in current music therapy practice. This co-creative relationship - the relationship between the participant, therapist and music - is perhaps the most important element of practice. Without a strong therapeutic relationship (also known as a therapeutic alliance), therapy has limited effect (Silverman, 2019). In my work, I see the need for a relational alliance to be built upon Rogerian principles - unconditional positive regard, empathy and congruence (Rogers, 2020) - which allows for honesty, self-disclosure and trust within the relationship. I value this relationship above all, and the early sessions of any music therapy program should be spent nurturing this. I hope this post has cleared up some questions you may have had - I suspect it's also likely to have created some new ones. Thats great. In the future, I will be waxing lyrical about Music Therapy theory and philosophies, current and past papers that I find interesting, and perhaps perspectives from other therapeutic modalities. Let me know if you'd like me to cover anything in particular! References:

Allied Health Professionals Australia. (n.d.). What is allied health? https://ahpa.com.au/what-is-allied-health/

Bruscia, K. (2013). Defining Music Therapy. Barcelona Publishers.

Rogers, C. (2020). Client-Centred Therapy; Its Current Practice, Implications and Theory. (New Edition). London, England. Constable.

Silverman, M., J. (2019). Music therapy and therapeutic alliance in adult mental health: A qualitative investigation. Journal of Music Therapy, 56(1). 90 - 116. 10.1093/jmt/thy019