Tapping into music’s healing power

We often talk about how music can inspire, console, excite and entertain us. It can also help us get well — or at least, help us cope more easily with the process of getting well.

Mary Plummer, an education reporter at our sister station KPCC in Los Angeles, reported this week on how at Children’s Hospital Los Angeles, there’s an Expressive Arts and Therapies Department. Doctors and nurses at the hospital can order art therapy in the same way they can prescribe medication.

One of the people on staff is music therapist Tacy Pillow. Besides being able to play fingerpicking guitar while wearing latex gloves (no small feat, that), Pillow has done research on the effects of music therapy on babies; in her study of 165 infants, 95 percent recorded lower heart rates after receiving music therapy. Pillow told KPCC:

"Music is always something that calms them. It can help calm them during routine procedures like a diaper change, or I’ve worked with higher medical staff even during, like, different surgeries," she said.

Plummer’s article also describes other art forms, including drawing and filmmaking, as treatments available to older children and adults.

It raises an interesting question for people who study music: When we look at possible music careers, most of the focus is on performing, composing or teaching. Those pursuits are certainly good ones, but what about music therapy? It may be another career path for aspiring musicians to consider.

Requirements may include ability to play while wearing latex gloves.

You can read Mary Plummer's complete story — which includes audio and a slideshow — by visiting KPCC's website.