Harmony Heals Hurt

Dr Baker and a young musician
Dr Baker and a young musician

Music is providing a backbeat to revolutionary research which suggests that rhythm can both take away the blues and be an important rehabilitation instrument.

From tribal chants to pop music, Dr Felicity Baker is proving that music therapy can help everyone from refugees to people with brain injuries.

For the past 12 years, the UQ music lecturer and music therapy training coordinator has been exploring the healing power of playing, listening and composing music and its potential to stimulate therapeutic change.

Dr Baker said one of her main research interests was exploring how singing and making music could help rebuild lost functions in people with brain injuries.  She has also researched, in collaboration with colleagues from the Royal Children’s Hospital in Brisbane and Royal Talbot Rehabilitation Centre in Victoria, how songwriting with these patients could help them accept their hospitalisation and cope with their disabilities.

Dr Baker analysed 82 songs composed by brain trauma patients in the past 12 years.

The patients received brain injuries from car accidents and were aged between seven and 65-years-old.  Using guitars and keyboards in music therapy sessions, the patients composed songs about their experiences, which were then replayed to them and their families to communicate their feelings.

Dr Baker said children and teenagers focused on memories and teenagers were most worried about their futures.  Most men wrote lyrics about their worries for the future and were angry and frustrated with their hospitalisation and rehabilitation.  Women reflected more on their relationships with others and were less focused on themselves.

“It’s very useful for clinicians to know what’s important for clients so that when they go into a session they already have an understanding of the likely issues,” Dr Baker said.
Dr Baker is also using music therapy to help teenage refugees in Brisbane cope with the transition of moving to Australia and their separation from family members left behind or killed.

For the past six months, she has been instructing music therapists to help 30 refugees from many countries, at Milpera High School, Chelmer.

The students were divided into groups and involved in songwriting and improvising on rhythmic instruments to share music of their cultures.

“Music is effective in therapy as it may express feelings and experiences that are unable to be described in words or may be too confronting emotionally to express in words,” Dr Baker said.  She said the students’ hyperactive behaviours were significantly reduced.  “The act of singing releases endorphins into people’s bodies – the natural drug behind all those happy feelings that come out when you make music”.

 

FUNDING
Community Gambling Benefit Fund

RESEARCHERS
Dr Felicity Baker www.uq.edu.au/uqresearchers/researcher/bakerfa.html
Email: f.baker1@uq.edu.au

Website: www.uq.edu.au/Music

 

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