Music therapy reaches crescendo in Indy

Music therapy is hitting a high note in central Indiana. Two new efforts—one focused on patients and the other on training tomorrow’s clinicians—are expected to give more Hoosiers access to the healing power of music.

The Indiana University School of Medicine (IUSM) recently appointed nationally renowned music therapy researcher Dr. Sheri Robb as a Walther Professor of Supportive Oncology. Robb’s resume includes 15 years of continuous funding from the National Institutes of Health (NIH) for her work in music therapy, which has focused on children battling cancer and their families.

Robb has been at IUSM since 2007, but her new role is part of the school’s effort to develop a more holistic supportive oncology program that’s “less siloed,” she says. The program, established by a $14 million gift to IUSM from the Walther Cancer Foundation, will ultimately include five endowed positions.

Her current work centers on the inter-related distress young children and their parents experience as the child is undergoing cancer treatment. Robb says more than half of kids between the ages of three and eight going through cancer treatment have significantly high levels of emotional distress as well as about 75% of parents, “which is really understandable.” She notes the child’s stress affects the parents, and vice versa.

“So how can we intervene?” says Robb. “Music is a universal, cross-cultural phenomenon. Music is familiar, non-threatening and something parents and kids encounter daily. But cancer treatment’s not normal, and it’s a very distressing experience. Part of bringing music into the environment is to bring something non-threatening and familiar into a threatening and unfamiliar environment.”

The current method that Robb is testing centers on music play, in which kids and parents make music together. Robb says the approach is known to help patients shift their mood state, regulate emotions and lower distress, and she’s also seeing the positive effects in mom and dad.

“I think of it as like a pressure cooker; parents feel pressure building up because they’re so concerned about, ‘How is my child doing? Are they going to be okay?’” says Robb. “And then they begin to play, and they get a glimpse of that normal four year-old—smiling and laughing—and that pressure cooker release goes off, and it releases some steam. It’s a cognitive shift in thinking [for the parents].”

Music therapy is reaching a crescendo nationwide; IUPUI says it’s projected to grow about 15% over the next decade, which is a higher rate compared to other fields. The school plans to help meet that demand for more therapists; it’s now the first in the state to offer a PhD in music therapy.

The program is within the Department of Music and Arts Technology and will heavily emphasize the role of technology, which the school says is allowing music therapists to connect with and “empower clients in ways that seemed impossible only a few years ago.”

The first group of students is now enrolled as the program launches this semester on campus. While the PhD program and the music therapy research effort at IUSM are not related, Robb expects some collaboration will happen naturally.

“The more we can learn about, ‘How does music affect our mind and body?’” says Robb, “the more intentionally we can use it to benefit people.”