Study aims to hit right note for mental health therapy

A LANDMARK study into how music therapy can assist children and young people with severe mental health problems is shortly to begin in the North.

Researchers from the School of Nursing and Midwifery at Queen’s University Belfast are to collaborate with the Northern Ireland Music Therapy Trust (NIMTT), a charity providing music therapy services to people with disabilities and disorders who have profound communication difficulties, to work on the three-year trial.

Music in Mind is believed to be the largest ever study undertaken into the effects of music therapy on young people with mental health difficulties.

More than 200 youngsters will receive music therapy over three years in an effort to see whether it helps improve their communication, self-confidence and self-esteem.

According to Sam Porter, professor of nursing research at the School of Nursing and Midwifery at Queen’s University, the study results have global implications, given the extent to which music therapy is practised worldwide.

NIMTT executive director Fiona Davidson concedes that many people have the wrong impression of music therapy – not only in terms of what it is – but how effective it can be.

“There has been a perception that it is some kind of alternative therapy and therefore something which should be ranked alongside therapies such as aromatherapy and reflexology. But the reality is very different.

“In many jurisdictions it is a State-registered profession, with the result that practitioners have to go through the same sort of process as occupational therapists and other recognised experts in order to practice.”