Music Therapy Can Increase Quality of Life for Those in Hospice
For many, music from certain eras can bring back memories of better times. For others, music soothes anxiety or gets them pumped up for a workout. When it comes to people living with dementia, music can help in all of those ways, but it can also help cognition.
Hospice organizations are keenly aware of the soothing power of music. Sometimes the music may be used casually, by the facility or the family, knowing that this is a type of music that the person who is in the dying process had always enjoyed. Increasingly, though, employing trained music therapists has been favored. This type of therapy seems especially helpful with those who are dying from Alzheimer’s or other forms of dementia. Perhaps this is because in the final stage of dementia, people have usually moved beyond the point where conversation is possible.
Karen Sholander, a life-long musician, is a board certified music therapist (MT-BC) in Dallas, Texas. She works with hospice patients and their families, helping them navigate through any terminal diagnosis to closure at the end of life. Many of her patients have dementia.
HealthCentral asked Karen to answer some questions via email about the nuts and bolts of music therapy. Our conversation, edited for length, is below:
CBB: Karen, music has been shown in studies to increase quality of life for people living with dementia and, in some cases, it seems to improve their cognitive functioning. Music for hospice patients is also about quality of life. Do you work with both communities or just with hospice?
Karen Sholander: I currently work only with hospice patients and their families, many of whom have dementia. I visit patients in their homes, group homes, or larger facilities, and the majority of sessions are one-on-one. Some patients live in a small residential care home, so I may implement a group music therapy session…
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