Music Therapy

The premise of this article revolves around music therapy as a means of lessening pain and making hospital stays easier for children 3-17 with different types of cancer. It focused on measures of pain and comfort, using music in difficult situations such as taking medicine, dealing with needles, etc. They kept track of the way the children felt before and after sessions ranging from 15-45 minutes and how interactive the activities were.

Not surprisingly, the children tended to report tha music distracted them from their pain and the medical procedures and relaxed them. Interestingly, they tended to report that the music made them happier and made them forget, at least temporarily, about their illnesses. This article reminds me of Oliver Sacks' work as he reported in Awakenings, with music seeming to have almost druglike properties. In Awakenings, Sacks studied the effects of both L-dopa and music on catatonic post-encephalitic Parkinsonian patients. The music had fascinatingly better effects, with no side effects like L-dopa, than drugs. Similarly, in this article music has shown to have better effects, at least on the affective states, of hospitalized children. One might argue that it is a conditioned effect; in Western culture, music is associated with relaxing, recreation, and higher intellectual venues, all of which go directly against the everyday life of hospitalized children in chronic pain. I would argue that as long as it seems effective and improves the children's lives, then it is a worthwhile endeavour. As a scientific treatment, however... I think there is definitely something important in music therapy, but as yet it cannot be proven using scientific methods.