Thoughtful Thursday: So, What Do I Want From Our Researchers?
This is the type of question that will take over my mind for a while, especially now that I have six more days of enforced rest away from my job. I don't have many clinical issues to think about, so my mind is capturing the most intriguing problem and is working away at it.
One of the most frustrating things for me is to identify something that I don't like without having an idea what can fix it. I get very frustrated with other people who just seem to complain and complain but who do not make any effort to make their situations less difficult for themselves. So, I am going to talk a bit more about what I need as a clinician from the research that is available out there.
This is just my brain telling my fingers what to type at this point, so this post may be somewhat disjointed and scattered - I'm nowhere near a place of landing for this particular topic - I still don't know what I want, but I hope to have a bit more of an idea once this post is finished...
I have stated that most of the research that is published in our music therapy professional journals has very little to absolutely nothing to do with my day-to-day job of being a music therapy clinician. When I try to read what is published, I find that most of the research questions have little to do with music therapy treatment. Most of the information that has the most clinical relevance to my setting comes to me from outside the profession, and that is a major problem, in my opinion.
I guess I am less interested in whether kids in music therapy treatment find music therapy to be an effective modality than how the music engages the adolescent brain on a brain activation level. The people who pay me to do music therapy do not care about whether adolescents like the treatment - they want to know how music therapy works and why they should choose music therapy over other forms of therapy.
I interacted with a reader who stated that her major issue was with replication of interventions/applications/experiences where one form of interaction was researched but not practical to replicate within a day-to-day clinical interaction. So, how do we take the information that has been collected under rigorous conditions and then apply that to the music therapy session?
There are lots of expectations for application placed on the everyday clinician. When you are a researcher, you can always make statements such as "well, under other circumstances, this result may not occur." When you are a clinician, you want to know what will best engage and challenge your client. You want definitive answers, and researchers are trained not to make absolute statements.
I have always wondered if there was a GRAND UNIFYING THEORY of MUSIC THERAPY - one concept that links all of us music therapists together in a way that is unalienable and universal. I was just getting started on some thought projects with a group of brilliant music therapists when my appointment with that group was discontinued. I often wonder if they are still searching for that theory or if they have given up. I still want that theory - a set of absolutes that we know about music and humans and therapy. I think having that sort of theory would help us as professionals and as a profession - something to know for sure about how and why and what music does.
I think this is what I want from our profession - a set of absolutes.
I'm not getting that from our current research, and it frustrates me.
So, how would this type of theory start? First, we would have to talk to all music therapists out in the world to see what they think about why music therapy works with all of the clients out there. We would need to cull all the brain and music research out there for every sort of documented response to music. We would need to ask questions and then test them both in the clinic and in the laboratory. We would need to collect all that information and try really hard to find the common themes through it all. We would also need to clarify our language in a way that a therapist from one corner of the world would be able to understand what a therapist from another country and theoretical perspective was saying. We don't really have that universality right now - even within the United States - and it just gets more confusing as you talk to therapists from different countries.
I think we all have things that we believe - things that we hold at the core of our professional identity as music therapists - but we don't often talk on this level. I'm not sure if we ever will, but I hope that we get to a point where this type of discussion is as natural to us as talking about how difficult it can be to find a well-paying job for some of us.
To recap (mainly for me so I can start to figure all this out) - I want to know why music works the way it does. I want to know what happens in the brain of my clients during music that is different from what happens in their brains in other environments. I want to know that these things happen in the brains of humans on a consistent basis. I want to know it all, but I want to know what is happening so I can strengthen the case for why folks should pay for music therapy services.
Well. I'm not finished with this discussion, by any means, but I am starting to figure out what I want from the research that I read. It's a start.
Comments and questions and challenges are always welcome!!
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