Music as Medicine

Therapy can soothe and stimulate patients fighting illness

By Dennis Thompson Jr.
HealthScoutNews Reporter

THURSDAY, May 30 (HealthScoutNews) -- Music's charms aren't just for savage beasts -- they also help ailing people who need solace, comfort or stimulation while fighting off illness.

Just ask Sunny Hadder, the University of Alabama at Birmingham Hospital's board-certified music therapist. Armed with keyboard and guitar, Hadder created the hospital's music therapy program from the ground up. Now, the doctors there say they couldn't do without her sweet tones and reassuring nature.

"We're seriously considering hiring a second music therapist," says Cathy Newhouse, administrative director of rehabilitation services for the hospital. "The demand for her service has increased significantly, to the point where one person can't fill the demand."

Music therapy has been found to improve breathing and blood pressure, provide distraction from chronic pain, increase a patient's sense of control while hospitalized, help bring sick and frightened children out of their shells, and generally reduce levels of fear, stress and anxiety.

Hadder says she's seen all of these effects while making her daily rounds through the hospital, seeing people of all ages suffering from all manner of illnesses.

"The first time I played at the hospital, there was one little boy who hadn't interacted with his mother or anyone since his heart surgery three days before," she says. "When I came in and started doing music with him, he started singing and playing. His mother was crying with relief."

Hadder describes herself as a piano prodigy, able to play since the age of 4. She always planned on becoming a concert pianist until she took a mission trip with a church group to Appalachia to help repair homes there.

"I changed my mind about my music career, and decided I'd rather do something to help people," she says.

Her father was a psychologist, and while flipping through one of his journals as a high school junior, she found an article by Dr. Oliver Sacks on music therapy. "When I saw the two words together, I knew that was what I needed to do," she says.

Learning music therapy at the University of Alabama at Tuscaloosa required that she be equal parts musician and healer. She took music theory and music history classes alongside courses on psychology, biology, anatomy and human development.

Hadder took her board examination to become a certified music therapist in April 1999. Currently there are 3,544 board-certified music therapists in the United States.

Al Bumanis, director of communications for the American Music Therapy Association, says Hadder's success with patients is typical for music therapists. No one has yet learned why music has so many therapeutic results, but research has proven the benefits are there.

"If you think how music has been used culturally for centuries, to soothe and to electrify and to bring people together, then it's not that much of a stretch to place it in a medical setting and see results," Bumanis says.

In November 1999, Hadder was invited to play in the pediatrics ward of the University of Alabama at Birmingham Hospital. Doctors there were so impressed with her music's effect on sick children that they contracted with her to start coming back on a regular basis.

She had impressed enough people by August 2000 that the hospital offered her a full-time job, making her its first-ever music therapist in residence. Doctors refer patients to Hadder, who does an assessment to find how music might best help them. She comes up with a set of goals for the patient, and begins seeing them once or twice a week.

Her therapy might include having them sing along with her, or beat on bongos in time with her playing. Hadder says she works often with stroke patients, helping them recover the ability to speak by having them finish the last words of popular song lyrics.

"The part of the brain built for speaking is different than the part of the brain that does music," she says. "We teach them to sing the words they want to say. For example, I'll sing, 'He's got the whole world in his,' and they'll say, 'hands,' even if they aren't able to speak normally."

Hadder's colleagues are enthusiastic about her effect on patients. In a recent survey of 48 doctors and nurses, her music therapy scored a 4.96 or higher out of five in all categories, including anxiety reduction, mood elevation, decrease in pain perception and "overall efficacy of intervention."

"This has proven to be an exceptionally effective service," one colleague wrote. "I have observed the effect on several difficult patients, and how it has aided in the recovery of those patients."

Another wrote, "Our patients and staff have all been touched by the music, singing and interactions. More needed!"

What To Do: To learn more about music therapy, visit the American Music Therapy Association or the Canadian Association for Music Therapy.

SOURCES: Sunny Hadder, board-certified music therapist, University of Alabama at Birmingham Hospital; Cathy Newhouse, administrative director, rehabilitation services, University of Alabama at Birmingham Hospital; Al Bumanis, director, communications, American Music Therapy Association, Silver Spring, Md.

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