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Special Needs Research and News
Gainesville Music Therapy parents receive frequent e-mails with the articles of interest to the special needs community, including research on Autism, Down Syndrome, ADHD, etc.; conferences and trainings being offered in the local area; and information on music therapy practice. If you would like to receive these articles, and/or our monthly newsletter by e-mail, please e-mail us to join the mailing list.
Monday, April 10, 2006Music Therapy: Disabled find their soundDisabled find their soundApr. 4, 2006. 06:34 AM JOHN TERAUDS CLASSICAL MUSIC WRITER There is only one thing that can help relieve the pain of seeing a severely disabled child: a smile. At age 7, Anjali Sharma is as tiny as a 2-year-old. She sits, restrained, in a little wheelchair, limbs akimbo, head at a wild tilt. Anjali has a severe form of Down Syndrome and cannot speak. She has trouble swallowing. Yet to her mother, her caregivers and the therapists gathered at Bloorview Kids Rehab, a new facility south of Sunnybrook Hospital, Anjali is a testament to the healing power of music. Thanks to a team of Bloorview researchers led by Dr. Tom Chau, Anjali can create sounds, through what the centre calls the Virtual Musical Instrument. A child's image is captured on a computer screen with a web camera. A therapist uses software to draw balloons around the child. The child sees the image and the balloons and, when she reaches for a balloon with a hand or foot or even with a tip of the head, it makes a sound. The balloon can make any sound the therapist chooses, from a piano key to a bird chirp. The balloon can also be adjusted for sensitivity so even the blink of an eye can generate a sound. That Anjali has made it this far is remarkable, says Dhan Sharma, who travels from her Brampton home every other day to visit. She has seen a big change in her daughter since she began music therapy last fall. Sharma says that Anjali has been very ill three times over the years. The last time this happened, doctors at the Hospital for Sick Children suggested she prepare for the worst. "Then, I arrived at the hospital in the morning, and she was fine," says Sharma. As soon as she was well enough to return to Bloorview, Anjali started working with music therapy intern Christina Weldon and therapist Andrea Lamont. "She has changed, but it's been very slow," says Sharma. "She used to get sick very quickly. Now she's on less medication, she gets less agitated. We can even bring her home for the weekend. I know I can handle her now." Lamont says the therapy helps passive children to engage with their surroundings: "A child needs to manipulate objects, to play with things in order to understand them." For example, a child with cerebral palsy who repeatedly tries and fails to grasp an object will eventually give up, says Lamont. "That has all kinds of implications, as the child learns to be helpless," she said. "When the child reaches out, the instrument is going to react in a particular way and make the child more willing to reach out and try again and be successful every time." The cause-and-effect of making sounds eventually helps the child connect with people. This helps the children develop "more meaningful relationships in their lives." "This generalization is starting to happen with Anjali, and that is so exciting," says Lamont. Weldon, who has been working with Anjali since October, says the girl now anticipates her weekly music therapy: "Her face just lights up when she's coming into the music room because she knows she's going to be part of this musical experience. Her focus on the screen has increased. Her attention span is going for a longer space of time." When Anjali started, says Weldon, "I don't think she understood that she was the one making the music ... Now she knows what to expect." `Music breaks through boundaries that have gagged people.' -Music therapist Fran Herman There now is more variety in her movements as well, "she doesn't just move her head," Weldon says. Lamont says the instrument helps participants "focus on ability rather than disability." Lamont thinks that having the child's face reflected on the computer screen helps: "Sometimes I wonder if they see themselves as a rock star when they're playing." Of course, music therapy is much older than computers. And the good-news stories have changed little over the years. Across town, near Bloor and Dufferin Sts., Fran Herman sits at the Canadian Music Therapy Centre, where a dozen adult sufferers of cerebral palsy and related debilitating conditions are arriving by Wheel-Trans for their weekly group session. Herman, a kindly grandmother figure, says she was one of four music therapists in Canada when she began practising in the early 1950s. Two of the people who have arrived for the group session, now in their 30s, were in her care as children. As in the case of Anjali, the adults are encouraged to make their own sounds — with guitars and percussion instruments. It's a merry cacophony. Even people who appeared vacant-eyed at the start of the session are smiling, singing or moving parts of their bodies. The effect is magical. What makes this treatment so special, says Herman, is that "music breaks through boundaries that have gagged people." This spurred Herman to found the Canadian Music Therapy Trust Fund 10 years ago. The organization has a broad range of activities, including providing financial aid to therapy students and funding therapy initiatives across the country. Laurel Young, the Music Therapy Centre's co-ordinator, says it also works in palliative care and with Alzheimer's patients. Young explains that music is so deeply embedded in our brains that, even when someone can no longer speak, it still allows a person to make a connection outside of themselves. In the case of Alzheimer's, for example, the person wakes up one day and can no longer understand what is being spoken around them, says Young. "It's like being in a foreign country. Then, suddenly, they discover that music is a language you can understand." Says Herman: "Have you ever heard of a human culture where a mother doesn't croon to her child?" Back at Bloorview, after many minutes of gently singing to Anjali while Lamont plays gentle background music on a synthesizer, Weldon gets out a drum and begins to tap it. Anjali's ill-co-ordinated left hand stiffens slightly. Her fingers reach out toward the drum's surface and her index finger begins to tap in unison with Weldon's hand. The smile on the face of Anjali's mother — and everyone else in the room — says more than any research study ever could. |