A report issued this week by Taiwan's Ministry of Education revealed a sharp increase in drug use among children as young as elementary school students (up to 815 in 2008 from 294 in 2007).

According to Wang Fu-lin, head of the ministry's Department of Military Training Education, this increase is likely explained by students gaining access to illicit substances because their unemployed parents have turned to drug use to ease their anxiety. If he's right, these numbers don't bode well for the children of other nations, including the US, now facing the worst economic climate since the Great Depression.

But if there's a warning to be gained from that report, there's also a fascinating approach to consider in a second report, also out of Taiwan just this week. According to Chou Hui-huang, director of Taiwan's Taichung Drug Abuse Treatment Center, the facility has recorded impressive results in the treatment and rehabilitation of drug users over the past six months using the unconventional treatment of...

violin lessons!

Beginning last July under the guidance of violinist Wu Wen-tung, a former conductor of the Chi Mei Mandolin Orchestra, 20 drug abusers attended a three-hour class every week and learned the rudiments of the instrument in three months. The students gave a successful concert at the end of the program and the overwhelming public response to the music therapy program prompted the center to invite the teacher to conduct a second class, taking on 20 more drug abusers undergoing rehabilitation.

The students in the second class marked the conclusion of their three months of training with a concert last Tuesday and family members were elated to see the results and share the joy in their achievements. Chou believes that, in learning how to play the violin, the drug abusers have built new values in life and have found the spiritual strength to help them overcome drug addiction.

There is a wonderful article here about the benefits of music therapy in treating autism. This excerpt was especially interesting: Improved socio-emotional development: In the first steps of a relationship, autistics tend to physically ignore or reject the attempts of social contact made by others. Music therapy helps to stop this social withdrawal by an initial object relation with a musical instrument. Instead of seeing the instrument as threatening, autistic children are usually fascinated by the shape, feel and sound of it. Therefore, the musical instrument provides an initial point of contact between the autistic and the other individual by acting as an intermediary.
That whole concept, of using a musical instrument to bridge the gap, kept tickling some old memory and I couldn't put my finger on it until today. I was remembering an old Stephen King story, "The Stand." There was a great moment in that book when musician-Larry Underwood reached his wits' end trying to communicate with the potentially-dangerous "feral" child he had come across, and had pretty much decided that he would have to abandon him.
Then, Larry happened to find a guitar and ran off a verse of "Jim Dandy," and this was what unlocked the door. The boy was instantly fascinated and focused entirely on replicating the same sounds he'd heard Larry coax from the guitar (rather than trying to off Larry in his sleep, which was definite progress in the course of the story). Of course, in Stephen King's world, the boy was a prodigy who mastered the instrument in a single night, which may or may not be realistic, but the premise of creating a bond through music, it appears, was sound.

I found an interesting article today about the healing power of music - stating what most Posi Music artists will tell you. Not all music heals: 

Sound heals and music heals better. But not every kind of sound or music heals. British Scientists have in a controlled experimentation discovered that extreme brass sound known as infrasound produces a range of bizarre effects in people such as anxiety, extreme sorrow & chills. Similarly harsh drum beating as practised in many parts of the globe can produce similar sensations not at all beneficial for human system. 

The full article is called Healing With Music and can be found HERE on the Natural Health Cure website. 

April 28th to May 1st  is the Partners in Health annual conference. Over 600 people from around the world will be gathered together to explore how the arts make a difference in patient care, hospital environments, caring for caregivers and communities.

A study in Boston has shown that patients who are recovering from strokes can relearn speach through singing.  By learning to sing phrases first, patients are able to then speak them. The full article, here at BBC, explains that the portion of the brain which affects singing is seperate from the portion which controls speach. Retraining the singing center of the brain to take over speach is already established as a medical technique.

With budget cuts taking their toll on music therapy programs nationwide (most notably in Arizona), it was good to find this article. The Kulas Foundation, one of the few philanthropic organizations in Northeast Ohio that focuses on music appreciation and music education, has just granted $60,000 to the Lake Hospital System for a study into the effects of music therapy on patients with diabetes. 200-300 diabetes patients are being sought to volunteer for the study, which is slated to begin next month. Anyone interested in participating should contact the Lake Hospital System Diabetes Care Center at 440-953-6272.

I just read a fantastic article about Texas Children's Hospital. As part of the cancer center, they have a recording studio. The one-of-a-kind project called “Purple Songs Can Fly” is part of their Arts in Medicine program. It was founded by Anita Kruse, a Houston singer-songwriter who raised $10,000 to start Purple Songs. Kruse works with the young cancer patients to help them write and record their own songs. The process takes the focus away from the daily fight against their illness.

"We're trying to get kids through cancer, so the more fun we can make it, the better their response is to everything," says ZoAnne Dreyer, an oncologist at the hospital. "It will give them a chance to get beyond this."

This should make you feel better about the future of music therapy. :)

On March 14th, Children's Music Fund will hold its first annual "Healing Through Music" benefit, featuring world class music, delicious food, award winning wines and a one-of-a-kind silent auction filled with priceless music memorabilia.

The Los Angeles based Children's Music Fund (CMF) mission is to provide musical instruments and music therapy to children with chronic and life-altering illness. All proceeds including an impressive list of items up for auction will go to building mobile recording studios in greater Los Angeles hospitals. Items up for auction include VIP tickets to one of the last tapings of the Tonight Show, System Of A Down autographed instrument package, and guitars and keyboards signed by members of Smashing Pumpkins, Counting Crows, Slash, Alien Ant Farm, Jane's Addiction, Velvet Revolver, 311, Sinbad, and Jay Leno.

Founded in 2002, CMF is the brainchild of Raffi Tachdjian M.D., MPH, a professor at UCLA who was inspired by a 16-year-old guitar-playing patient who died from a rare kind of bone cancer. To raise money to buy instruments and provide music therapy, Tachdjian has produced three compilation CDs that include artists such as Mia Doi Todd, Milosh, children's singer Raffi, and others. As interest in the Children's Music Fund grows, Tachdjian plans to expand its reach to as many seriously ill children as possible by taking the program directly to them. "We plan to set up mobile recording studios with recording equipment and instruments in pediatric hospitals so that children, some of whom stay for months on end, are able to cope with their illness and pain."

As a tutor I am always looking for different ways to reach children who are experiencing learning blocks. I was thrilled to hear that Nintendo approached the MENC (National Music Education Association) last October about exploring the potential of Wii Music in the classroom. Already there are music educators using the music game to enhance the learning experience of their students. The game is well suited to an educational environment, and the kids embrace it with an enthusiasm which instantly opens their minds to the learning process.

Parents of the children receiving music therapy at more than 80 Arizona clinics which might fall victim to the budget cut are planning to rally at the state capitol next Thursday to protest the 55% funding decrease.

There are definitely a lot of valuable programs in trouble but, for what it's worth, I don't think music therapy is by any means facing "extinction" as long as there are also new programs cropping up. Just last month on December 22, a hospital in my area--Sarasota Memorial--dedicated a brand new music therapy center named after AC/CD singer Brian Johnson. Private funding may have to take up the slack for awhile--in this case, equipment for the new music therapy room was donated by the John Entwistle Foundation--but that's just the nature of a recession.

Actually, come to think of it, just the growing membership at internet sites like this one bode well for the future of music therapy.

You know, every time I hear about programs being cut because of funding issues--any programs, not just music therapy--it irritates me all over again because I can't see the logic in ANY such cuts until one glaringly obvious financial black hole has been eliminated by decriminalizing marijuana. The 2005 "Miron Report," endorsed by 530 of the country's finest economists, estimated the combined savings (expenditure for law enforcement and incarceration) and earnings (tax revenues) at between $10 billion and $14 billion per year. That's an awful lot of money that could be funding legitimate social programs.