Aged Care Insite Issue 97 | October-November 2016 | Page 20

practical living Song of thy self There are many possibilities for music’s apparent ability to restore the memory and get people back in touch with the person they’ve always been. Bill Thompson and Amee Baird interviewed by Dallas Bastian W atching a clip of someone with advanced dementia tap along to one of their favourite songs and sing a few words was just one way attendees of a recent forum witnessed the power of music in care. BaptistCare’s recent dementia forum, Stories of Me, brought together industry experts, carers and people living with dementia to explore technology and creativity in dementia care. Presenters professor Bill Thompson and Dr Amee Baird, from Macquarie University, delved into the healing power of music and its profound effect on people with neurological disorders. Be it a lullaby, tune of old or new pop song, pieces of music can be used to explore memory and self-identity, and prompt new learning in people with dementia, the pair told the room. In her presentation, Thompson discussed how music can affect people with neurological disorders in multiple ways, addressing each individual’s problems and providing benefits to many. One feature of music that Baird focused on was the impact it can have on memory. The research team will be looking at the relationship between music, memory and the self. 18 agedcareinsite.com.au Baird said there are many ways music can be incorporated into healthcare settings and the team hopes to develop a program that can be used in care facilities. Upon learning about the relationships between music and the brain, earlier this year, BaptistCare decided to conduct a pilot study of its own, looking at the impact individual, personalised playlists had on the quality of life of residents with dementia. A team led by Barnetta Lesta, a registered music therapist with BaptistCare, made playlists to target the individual needs of some residents at the provider’s Macquarie Park facility. They found that some residents responded immediately, moving to the music, smiling, singing and whistling, while the playlists had a calming effect on others. The technology behind the playlists was foreign to some staff members, but Lesta says the project was made simpler by getting IT team members involved and running training sessions to get all care workers on the same page. “We wanted to see this intervention being owned by all the staff to promote the best outcomes,” she says. Here, Thompson and Baird sit down with Aged Care Insite to discuss the potential of music therapy. ACI: Bill, what is the research telling us at the moment about music-based therapy? BT: Well, there are different research projects at different places in the world, and some people focus on neurological conditions, such as Parkinson’s. Other people focus on dementia and so forth, but they’re telling us that music can affect people in multiple ways, depending on the issue at stake; whether they’ve got a motor problem, memory problems, emotional problems or social isolation problems. So music can be used to cater to each individual’s situation and help benefit those people. In your presentation, you talked about seven beneficial features of music that may help explain the effect it has on people with neurological disorders. Just briefly, what are those seven factors, and how can they influence people? BT: Music is sort of a jack of all trades. It has so many different features all combined into one nice package that people enjoy engaging with. One of them is that music seems to stimulate the motor. It’s physical, so the physical aspect of music is important. We dance to music, clap to music, and so forth. The second is that it’s social. We often engage in music with other people, and having communication and contact with others is important for all of the