Can music help teenagers deal with their problems?

Jenna’s (not her real name) grandmother does not get heavy rock music, not even when it is her grand-daughter’s composition. But she listened anyway because it was 15-year-old Jenna’s attempt at communicating with her. They were going through a tough transition period, thrown together by trauma.

The teenager had just moved in with her grandmother as her parents are heroin addicts who had gone their separate ways and neither could care for her. Jenna’s song had come out from the music therapy sessions she had attended to help her cope with the upheavals in her life.

At that time, music therapist Dr Katrina McFerran has been working with her for four weeks and they had written the song together. Each verse contained Jenna’s aspirations and disappointments, her hopes and despair. But Jenna’s grandmother didn’t know how to respond to her rocky jam, and the teenager’s spirits sank.

“I said ‘Hang on. We need to explain what this song is about.’ The grandmother and the girl started to have a little talk after that,” recounts McFerran, a University of Melbourne lecturer.

In their next session, she found an elated Jenna. Discussing the song had opened up the line of communication between Jenna and her grandmother, enabling them to begin talking openly.

“They started to repair their relationship. Her life didn’t get heaps better but one of the priority relationship in her life became stable for her. As far as I know, her relationship with her grandmother is stronger now,” says Dr McFerran, illustrating the benefits of music therapy.

Music is a medium everyone can relate to. But it has also proven to have positive effects on people’s physical and mental health, and therapists are harnessing its power to heal and rehabilitate. Music therapy is an improvisational approach using all elements of music – harmony, melody, rhythm, lyrics – to engage and connect.

Therapists have used music in diverse situations, from calming premature babies to reaching out to autistic children living in isolation to lifting people suffering from depression to triggering memory in Alzheimer patients. Dr McFerran uses music therapy to work with teenagers.

McFerran says teenagers may not open up easily but will share the songs which are meaningful to them.

Reaching out to teenagers

“When people are going through difficult times, music can be a powerful force for growth and coping,” says Dr McFerran, one of the keynote speakers at the Malaysia Music Cares Music Therapy Conference, organised by the Malaysian Music Therapy Association in collaboration with HELP University and University Putra Malaysia.

Dr McFerran who has written books on music therapy says that music therapy is about a relationship which is intentionally and carefully designed to meet people’s needs.

“Sometimes people with the greatest needs aren’t able to design their own programmes. They are not meant to work that out for themselves anyway, they need an expert. The music therapist’s responsibility, then, is to work out what is the right approach in the given situation.”

Teenagers, in particular, have the most intense relationship with music, especially those who are going through a rough patch like Jenna. So, music becomes a bridge between the teenager and the music therapist.

“They rely on it more and turn to it heavily. They may not want to have a conversation where they reveal private parts of their life because they know it might be dangerous. They might not trust you yet but they will share the songs which are meaningful.

“They may write a song which is very revealing but for the value of the song, they are willing to make that commitment,” she explains.

As it happens, songwriting is Dr McFerran’s choice method in music therapy. She also uses other tools such as music sharing, improvisations and performances.

“I find songwriting is the easiest to talk about because there are words in there as well. Most people operate in a verbal world and songs are a beautiful bridging point between the purity of music that has no words and the real world which relies on words quite a lot,” says Dr McFerran.

The 45-year-old mother of two has been practising music therapy since she was 21. It was Dr McFerran’s mother who first recognised her potential for the field.

A charitable organisation had given a talk on music therapy at her school but then 17-year-old Dr McFerran was not paying attention. But Dr McFerran’s mother was a teacher at her school and she quickly drew her daughter’s attention to the subject.

“She said to me, ‘Did you hear that? Music therapy … that’s so you.’ I wanted to be a social worker or a music teacher. I just wanted to make music with people as much as I could and indeed, that’s what it has been like,” recalls Dr McFerran who grabbed the chance to combine her love for music and her affinity with troubled teens.

Dr McFerran who plays the piano, saxaphone and guitar grew up in a small, conservative town and understands the pressures of conformity and the predicament of young people who felt they couldn’t fit in.

Using music purposefully

As a young therapist, Dr McFerran worked with bereaved adolescents in the palliative care unit in a community centre. Her task was to support children whose parents were dying. The experience led to her decision to focus on helping young people.

“Music seemed like an obvious way to work them and my boss asked me to design a programme. That’s when I started to specialise in working with young people.

“The problem was I haven’t read about that kind of work in any of our research literature and I was like ‘Oh my god, there is nothing. I don’t know what to do. I don’t know if I’m being helpful.’

“So, I decided I would do my PhD and focus on trying to understand what the benefits were for young people in improvising and playing instruments and expressing their emotions,” says Dr McFerran who completed her doctorate at the University of Melbourne in 2001.

McFerran believes in ‘jamming’ with teenagers on their turf. She says teenagers have the most intense relationship with music. Photo: Katrina McFerran

Since then, Dr McFerran has become an international expert on using music therapy to help young people cope with grief and loss, mental health issues, substance abuse and other social issues. She also works with those with intellectual, learning and physical disabilities.

She works in various settings such as hospitals, schools and in communities.

For instance, Dr McFerran collaborated with Kate Teggelove to help 26 high school students severely affected by bush fire in 2009 using music therapy. The students were able to work out their feelings, insecurities and fears through songwriting or simple jamming sessions. It helps them to express themselves and begin to heal.

“A lot of time, people are very able to use music for themselves. But when you are particularly vulnerable or you have different needs that you can’t meet for yourself, then the music therapist helps to determine the best way to use music and to make sure it is not harmful for you,” she says.

Therapists like to use ritual in their session, such as doing the same thing to mark the beginning of working together like singing a song. After that, the therapist would start working towards their goal of the day, using methods such as discussing song lyrics or how certain music affects the way the client feels, writing song lyrics and music sharing. Once the main part of the therapy is over, the therapist prepares the patient to leave with another song or activity. “What we are gradually building towards is to play instruments together and try to understand what that means for us and that addresses the needs of the person,” Dr McFerran says.

There are, however, limitations to what music therapy can achieve.

“It cannot perform miracles,” Dr McFerran cautions. “It’s not the music that does something. It has to come from the desires of that person who is participating in the music.”

“Music is an object on a score. But when it’s held between people, it becomes a verb. We do it together and that’s where the power is because we can respond, adjust and resonate with people,” Dr McFerran concludes.

What is music therapy

Music therapy is a form of therapy which uses all forms of music as tools to assist people with their recovery, be it physical ailments, mental health problems, cognitive impairments or depression.

While music therapy has been around for thousands of years in various cultures in one form or another, it became prominent after the two world wars. Musicians were deployed to play for war veterans who suffered from physical and emotional trauma.

The patients responded positively and health professionals took notice of music’s therapeutic power. The man who played a crucial role in moving music therapy forward was E.Thayer Gaston, dubbed as the father of music therapy.

Michigan State University established the first academic programme in music therapy in 1944 and other institutions followed suit.

Some of the known effects of music therapy are lessening the effects of dementia, coping with grief and depression, reducing pain, improving speech in special needs individuals, managing sleep disorder and increasing motor functions in people with Parkinson’s disease.

Music therapy in Malaysia is available in medical centres, nursing homes and drug rehabilitation settings. Some of the hospitals which offer music therapy services are Hospital Kuala Lumpur (for pediatric cancer patients), University Malaya Medical Centre (for mental health patients) and at Cheras Rehabilitation Hospital, Kuala Lumpur and Hospital Serdang, Selangor.

Music therapy is also used for voice rehabilitation, end-of-life care and stroke rehabilitation. Universiti Putra Malaysia lecturer and music therapist Dr Indra Selvarajah is developing a music therapy programme for cardiac and stroke rehabilitation at the Cheras Rehabilitation Hospital.

There are currently six music therapists in Malaysia who are practising privately and are all part of the Malaysian Music Therapy Association.

Source : Star2.com