How music therapy can reduce stress, ease pain

Expert suggests use of complementary alternative medicine in highly individualized way


DALLAS ― Judith Ritchie unlocked her office at the Sammons Cancer Center and carefully gathered the instruments that she determined would best serve her patients in the oncology unit.

An American Indian flute. A plucked psaltery or lap harp.

Ritchie, a certified music practitioner on the staff of Baylor University Medical Center at Dallas, fills doctors’ prescriptions to bring pain relief to patients with cancer. She studies their charts, searching their backgrounds and histories for clues to the sounds and rhythms that may relax them and, perhaps, reduce their need or dosage of pain-relieving medications.

Music, once dismissed by medical experts as a questionable alternative therapy, has evolved into a respected tool in integrative medicine programs in an increasing number of hospitals over the last decade.

Dr. Brent Bauer, professor of medicine and director of the Complementary and Integrative Medicine Program at Mayo Clinic in Rochester, Minn., says research is beginning to catch up with the value of music in promoting healing.

He credits the National Institutes of Health with changing attitudes in the professional community when it launched its Complementary Alternative Medicine program in 1998. The program evaluates massage, acupuncture, meditation, art and yoga in treating a variety of conditions.

At the same time, he cautions that these therapies are not meant to substitute for medical treatment but to improve their effectiveness. In addition, they must be applied in a highly individualized way, he says. What works for one patient might not work for another.

“They’re not going to cure cancer or directly impact heart disease, but these things can help reduce stress, which helps promote healing by reducing blood pressure and the heart rate,” he says.

In incurable cases, it can also simply ease pain, Ritchie says.

That’s how it was for her patient Eva Ward, who spoke in November about how she looked forward to the way melodies from Ritchie’s flute whispered like a soft wind through her hospital room.

“It’s pretty peaceful,” Ward said at the time. “It reminds me of the mountains. And when she plays it, it elevates me above every problem I’ve gone through. It helps with everything.” Ward, who had acute myelogenous leukemia, died Feb. 3 at Baylor Carrollton at age 64.

Ritchie’s music intervention is one of the many ways music can be used to help patients. Music therapy, which requires a different license, is more interactive, with music used to accomplish a prescribed task, such as helping a patient to move muscles, articulate words or expand cognitive functions.

Dr. Jeff Kendall, a clinical psychologist and associate professor in psychiatry at the University of Texas Southwestern Medical Center, launched a music therapy program at that school’s Simmons Cancer Center in September, working with Southern Methodist University music therapy students.

“When you treat the whole patient and not just the cancer, the cancer outcomes are better,” Kendall says, citing a 2008 Institute of Medicine report called “Cancer Care for the Whole Patient” that he credits for fueling the demand for music therapy in cancer wards in particular.

Music therapy not only can help with a variety of goals, it can be tailored to different ages. Lisa Jones, a music therapist in the Child Life department at Children’s Medical Center Dallas, says she’s been impressed with research that supports her observations that music can help some babies do better in the intensive care unit. “We have had great results,” she says.

Dr. Oliver Sacks, the neurologist and author, has offered a passionate case for the healing power of music in his best-selling book “Musicophilia: Tales of Music and the Brain,” which was revised in 2008 (Vintage, $26). Last year, an episode of the CBS television show “The Doctors” was devoted to “How Music Affects Your Health.”

One of the program’s co-hosts, doctor of psychology Wendy Walsh, speculates that economics may drive an increased interest in music therapy. While it may seem an added expense, it can prove to be a money-saver if it reduces the need for pain medicine and invasive procedures, she says.

“Some countries with socialized medicine have to watch their bottom line. More and more they are turning to complementary treatments like music therapy to cut costs and improve health care.”

Economics aside, most therapists talk about it as a passion, a mission, a labor of love.

Gustavo Tolosa, a professor at Texas Woman’s University, founded Musical Angels, a Dallas nonprofit group that brings keyboards to hospitals and teaches children to play because, he says, he wants to give them a way to keep music in their lives.

“One of the things they lose when they are sick is control,” Tolosa says. “They’re told when to do this and when to do that. But during these lessons, they control the keyboard and they make music with their own hands and hearts. It is common for them not to want pain medicine or even notice they have had a shot when they’re immersed in making music.”

Musician Jim Newton was inspired to start the nonprofit group Hugworks in Hurst after he was moved by the joy a child with cancer expressed when Newton played for him. Hugworks dispatches music therapists and therapeutic music entertainers who see a healing benefit in the pleasure the music brings.

One of the music therapists he sends to a variety of hospitals is Elizabeth “Bizzy” Stewardson, who earned her board certification at SMU 12 years ago. She says she’s gratified by the change she’s observed in how her work has been valued over the years.

“Before I would get my referrals from child-life specialists,” she says. “But now I have doctors seeking me out.”

A group of kids in residence at Our Children’s House at Baylor clustered around Stewardson as she set out brightly colored, easy to grasp instruments on a November afternoon. Sitting on the floor, guitar in hand, she encouraged the kids to respond as she sang everything from “Old MacDonald Had a Farm” to Barney’s “I Love You.”

Some of the kids wandered and returned during the session, but 5-year-old Michael Soliz of Abilene, Texas, never stopped moving, singing and playing, drinking in every moment.

“Music makes him very happy, very relaxed,” his mother, Christina Soliz, 34, said afterward. “Music is a good expression for him because he has a hard time expressing himself with his words.”

Michael had no problem finding words when asked his favorite song: “All of them.”

By Nancy Churnin

(The Dallas Morning News)

(MCT Information Services)