SeminarThe benefits of music therapy - using music to promote, maintain and restore mental, physical, emotional and spiritual health - are to feature in a seminar at the University of Limerick (UL) tomorrow.
The non-verbal, creative, structural and emotional qualities of music can be used in therapeutic settings to facilitate contact, interaction, learning, self-expression, communication and personal development, according to Dr Mícheál Ó Suilleabháin, professor of music at UL.
This therapy is used with a wide variety of individuals regardless of age, ability or musical background and is increasingly facilitated by an accredited music therapist in various settings. Vicky Abad, music therapy expert and director of 'Sing & Grow', Australia, will speak on "Music Therapy in Paediatric Oncology wards". She is responsible for setting up the 'Sing & Grow' outreach pilot programme in Limerick.
Dr Kaja Jensen, director of the music therapy programme at Southern Methodist University in Dallas, Texas, will also address the seminar. He helped set up the UL music therapy programme in 1996.
"Students were consistently asking me about music therapy. When I moved to Limerick University, I saw there was a lack of music therapy training at any level in Ireland," Prof Ó Suilleabháin said.
A combination of factors which included the proximity of St Vincent 's special needs school for physically and mentally challenged people and Milford Hospice convinced him of a need for the provision of international training at the highest level. "I think music therapy as a discipline is a scientific application of experiences we've all had with music. That is the power of music to communicate and to move us emotionally. Because of that power, it carries within it a great potential in a therapeutic situation.
"It is now an increasingly recognised mainstream therapy. Our course is a two-year full-time programme, which consists of an intense interaction of music studies, psychiatry and psychology."
They work closely with the Mid-Western Health Board. "The success of the teaching in a therapeutic situation isn't necessarily immediately measurable. Like a time bomb, the impact may not go off for many years after the teaching relationship," Prof Ó Suilleabháin said
The Music Therapy in Medical Settings seminar takes place at the Irish World Music Centre, UL, tomorrow at 2.30 p.m. Admission is free and the public are welcome to attend. Further information from (061) 202917 or ellen.byrne@ul.ie