Creative Music Therapy

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Discussion The goal of this study was to gather information about the integration of creative arts into music therapy practice. While there has been research done on the benefits and potential interventions that combine creative arts and music therapy, this study focused on the impact of training, exposure, and reasoning behind music therapist’s decision to incorporate or exclude additional creative arts in their practice. To focus on current trends in the field, responses were collected strictly from participants that indicted they were actively employed as a music therapist. This resulted in 457 responses being analyzed for this survey. The main focus of this study was to see if and how music therapists were incorporating creative arts …show more content…
Interestingly, the respondents of this survey were largely (41%) music therapists that have only been in the field from 0-5 years and the largest percent had either a bachelor or Master’s degree. This suggests that many of the music therapists practicing today are relatively new to the field and have more education than just that of a certification and higher. While many of the expected settings of employment were indicated, hospital, assisted living, psychiatric, etc., the range of settings that music therapists are employed are vast and was an example of how music therapy is continuing to spread into all types of healthcare, assisted living, schools and private practice settings. These include but are not limited to: rehab, adult care homes, churches, cancer centers, substance abuse treatment facilities, domestic abuse treatment centers, pediatric treatments, etc. This variety in settings suggests that music therapists are seeing a diverse set of patients, residents and clients. Music therapists then must design and implement interventions to help these clients achieve their unique goals. While this is not new information to the world of music therapy, it is important to note for this study how large and diverse the population is that is served by music …show more content…
Using the data from this study it can be assumed that the many music therapy curriculums do not contain required courses in the creative arts. This is not to say that music therapy students are not exposed to creative arts in other courses, but to say that they did not have any course work exclusively in other creative arts. Additionally, only a small percentage (35%) of participants indicated that they received some kind of training or exposure to other creative arts by their own desire outside of their university required training i.e. classes, conferences, etc. Although a significant number of respondents indicated that they did not have any required courses in creative arts as part of their curriculum in music therapy, the AMTA Professional Competencies indicate in section A. Music Foundations Part 6: Movement Skills, music therapists should be able to: “6.1- Direct structured and improvisatory movement experiences as well as, 6.2- Move in a structured and/or improvisatory manner for expressive purposes” (AMTA 2013). This researcher found this to be particularly interesting as we as music therapists are expected to be able to demonstrate these skills, however many professionally may not have received any training in