Music Therapy Interventions for Improving Fluency Among People Who Stutter

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Re: question for a school assignment

From: Erika Shira
Date: 11 Oct 2008
Time: 19:57:51 -0500
Remote Name: 66.92.76.147

Comments

Hi, thanks for your questions. ***Who recommends music therapy to a disfluent client entering treatment for the first time?*** It's often the case that people research and pursue music therapy on their own, since folks in related fields might not know to make the recommendation. This tends to be pretty true across all disciplines; most of us don't know what other disciplines do and aren't thinking outside our discipline. It's particularly true with the expressive arts therapies. People might not know of them, or worse, they might have discredited the professional arts therapies because they've lumped them in with some of the quackery out there that involves sound healing and listening to CDs to cure ailments and whatnot. ***How is music therapy advertised to this client?*** I'm not sure quite what you're asking. Regarding how to find a music therapist, I've answered that here; you can browse through the comments and find it. Sometimes when folks have a really specific MT practice, they'll network with folks in other disciplines who also work with the same population. They might send brochures to nursing homes, special ed schools, clinics, or wherever would be appropriate. ***Is it applicable to most stuttering patients/can anyone benefit from it?*** Well, no form of treatment is 100% effective for anything. If someone makes this claim, they're not basing their claims on science and they're not being ethical. That being said, I've found that this technique is usually pretty effective -- purely anecdotally, and not with a statistically significant sample size. Also, the nature of music therapy is that we tailor our work to follow the client where s/he is at and to do what's going to be most effective, so MTs don't tend to do a lot of research of the type where we saw 20 people and did X sessions using X treatment plan; it's kind of at odds with our client-centered approach. ***How do you define termination with a client?*** Personally, I allow the client to define the length of the relationship, unless I move or something. Remember that MT can address all sorts of different things, so if someone started out working with me around stuttering, and then found that it was useful to work with me on processing their divorce or something, I'd allow them to continue in that direction if it were productive. I'd of course be giving them feedback about how our therapeutic relationship was playing out and remind them where we'd come from and where we seemed to be going. ***If you had to say, what strategy or strategies seem to work most consistently with clients?*** Hmm, probably consistency, presence, respect. In any type of work. I think we always fare better when we trust our providers and know what's expected of each of us. This is as true for your music therapist or speech therapist as it is for your dentist or even (especially?) your auto mechanic. Thanks, and good luck with your assignment!


Last changed: 10/11/08