Music soothes aged breast

Press, 9 March 1988, Page 21

Music soothes aged breast

GARRY ARTHUR

James Robinson, aged 101, used to just sit in! his chair at Parklands Private Hospital and rock all day. Now he sits and hums away to the music of John Denver, Vai Doonican and other favourites (on a tape specially compiled for him. j He is obviously Enjoying himself. and Judy Cooper, the hospital’s motivation therapist, has no doubt that it has! improved the quality of his life. ( The music was chosen by his daughter from her- knowledge of his life and his musical tastes.

A third, of the patients; at Parklands Hospital in Papanui Road are psycho-geriatric patients. For them, the whole hospital programme revolves around music therapy. “Three years I ago we'd reached the stage where !we were not getting through to these people.” says MrsiCooper.

She read books- about music therapy, attended workshops and conferences and began using it under the guidance of the New Zealand Society! for Music Therapy. “Now we’ve progressed to the stage where we use it to help with behaviour to motivate patients for other activities, and to! channel bad behaviour." I

Mrs Cooper’s greatest success in that respect has been with a senile woman in [ her 80s who gives continuous little screeches all day long. "There was nothing that medicine could do to stop her,” she says. "She has been here six years and had deteriorated to the stage where phe had been screeching for the last three

years. Eyen when she was drugged she would screech.”

Mrs Cooper learned from the woman’s family what kind of music she jiked and arranged for a pianist to record it on tape. The music was played to the woman, and at first it seemed to be having no effect at all. She continued to screech.

"It took) three months before the cleaning lady ; came running to .me one day and said, ’Come quickly, she’s singing.’ The music had finally channelled her screeching into singing. Now she sings all I the old songs like ‘Maggie.’ She gets great comfort out of this.” So do | the staff and other residents now that the screeching has stopped. One song on the tape, "How Great Thou Art," gets her upset because i,t was played at her mother's fjuneral. but Mrs Cooper regards this as positive therapy, too. It allows the patient to show her emotions.

Mrs Cooper has spent the last three years researching the past lives of her patients and developing individual music therapy programmes for all 45 of them.

Patients who have to be moved into intensive care take their tapes with them and continue to enjoy their music. “When they die, the relatives often ask for the tape — probably it’s a help to them.”

It is quite evident that music is able to get through to patients where other means have failed, she says. It also enhances the quality of life for all manner of patients. “When you come into a home, everything is taken away from you," she says., “You are told when to eat, what to eat, when to shower, when to!go to bed — all choices are taken away from you. As motivation therapists, we offer them choices, and music allows them a I choice and a better quality ofj life.”

Mrs Cooper, who is president of the Canterbury branch of the Society for Music Therapy, emphasises that music therapy is controlled use of music, not just going in and playing the piano.

Music can be used, for example, to start a conversation with a withdrawn or depressed person, because particular music is very evocative, and the memories triggered are usually pleasant ones.

“We find that most old people like music from their courting years," she says. One old lady, in her 80s, did not respond to any of the music until she heard some rock ’n’ roll. "Her daughter says she always!liked something lively and bright."

Parklands Hospital recently organised a music therapy workshop at Templeton Hospital, attended by 60 nurses, occupational therapists, parents of handicapped children, and teachers!

“The patients responded incredibly well,” Mrs Cooper says. “Six residents came in to do the parachute activity, where you all hold the parachute around the edges and it’s raised and lowered over them. They got very boisterous, but then Mary Brooks, a Wellington ; music therapist, played some very lovely music and slowly they all relaxed and they looked as if they were asleep. Mrs Cooper has found music therapy such a useful tool that she has begun to learn the piano and the autoharp herself this year.

“Music is taking over our day here at Parklands,” she says. “We’ve gone from making baskets to meeting the needs of the patients. If you meet the patients where they are, you will have a successful programme.” Mary Brooks says' music therapy can be used to help all kinds of people, not just psychogeriatric patients. It has proved very helpful with autistic children, sometimes by taking a strange sound that the child makes and playing it back in a musical context. This helps to make contact with the child. “One autistic child here in Wellington plays just one note on

the piano,” she says. “By putting that note into a musical context you can have a musical conversation with the child, and we can build on that.”

As well as working in geriatric homes and hospital in Lower Hutt, Mrs Brooks has recently begun work at the Puketiro Assessment Centre with intellectually handicapped children.

“We use music to help towards non-musical goals,” she says. “It’s not to make a musician of them, but to help with motor control for example, to improve movement. We use music to look at their intellectual, physical, mental and emotional needs, and to help reach those goals.”

She notes that music has been used as therapy since ancient Greek times, when different musical modes were considered to have different healing properties. In the Bible, David played to Saul in his depression. “But as a discipline, music therapy began after World War 11, and it was found to be very effective with soldiers.”

Mrs Brooks says that although there are many university courses for music therapists in the United States, there is no tertiary training for it as yet in New Zealand. Her society is keen to see. a post-graduate course started at some tertiary institution.

Screeching

turns to songs

Therapy in ancient Greece