Music Therapy & Pediatric Pain

Music Therapy & Pediatric Pain includes the writing of 21 clinicians and researchers committed to developing the area of music therapy and pediatric pain. Medical music therapy, based on a mind-body model, unifies numerous orientations and substantiates the premise that medical aspects of practice can be achieved via music therapy, as in the use of drumming to release a painful experience of veni-puncture, or the use of a gong to assist a child in breathing through an episodic acute painful crisis, rather than providing a pharmacological agent. In addition, medical aspects of practice can be achieved through the incorporation of psychotherapeutic principles into traditional medical practice, such as entraining music to help a failure-to-thrive infant feed or bonding integrative lullabies used to alleviate the inherent stress that can develop between parent and child during hospitalization. Each of the authors contributes a perspective that illuminates the scope of practice in the medical music therapy model including process oriented approaches, multidisciplinary approaches, the ethics of pain control in infants and children, music therapy practice in pediatric music therapy settings, theory and research on music therapy and pediatric pain, techniques such as entrainment, clinical music improvisation, imagery, music vibration, and the rhythmic language of health and disease, applications with particular populations such as cancer, sickle cell and surgical procedures and a bibliography. This introductory text provides the reader with some guidelines that enhance the assessment and treatment of pediatric pain through a variety of music and music therapy practices.