Music Therapy: Time to Be Ourselves

This weekend, Dr. Dena Register of the University of Kansas (see http://music.ku.edu/programs/memt/faculty/register/ for her bio)  came to Drury University's Center for Music Therapy to discuss the process of getting state recognized licensure for music therapists in the state of Missouri. Colorado just introduced a bill with licensure language, and two other states passed either licensure or registry bills in 2011.

It has been a record year for music therapy developments with unprecedented coverage in the news, and media such as the film "The Music Never Stopped" and Jodi Picoult's novel "Sing me Home."

Things are moving and changing.

In the past, music therapists have sought the important process of licensure alongside or underneath the umbrella of other therapy and helping professions, such as in New York state where music therapists are licensed under a Creative Arts Therapist license.

This is not the direction we'd like to see music therapy licensure take in MO. Oftentimes, when someone asks us, "Music therapy? What's that?" we respond by saying, "We do this that's like occupational therapy, and this that's like psychotherapy, and this that's like speech therapy, and this that's like physical therapy, and, and, and..."

Dr. Register proposed that while this is a useful way to communicate with people who have never heard of music therapy, perhaps it's time we begin to stand alone because none of those other professions work across the life-span with any and every diagnosis like music therapists do. We love and respect our peers and colleagues in the other helping professions, but as Dr. Register pointed out, you are not likely to see an art therapist working in the NICU, or a dance therapist working in hospice and end-of-life care.

The other therapists tend to define themselves by the area they practice in: speech, occupational, physical, development, psychology.

We call ourselves music therapists because music is the main overriding factor that ties all our work together. Music can be clinically beneficial to every age and diagnosis, from labor and delivery through the very last seconds of life.

It's time that we chose to stand up and be counted as an independent, fully-functioning profession. The other professions have worked hard and deserve the state recognition and understanding that they receive.

Music therapists are music therapists. Nothing more, nothing less, and it's time that we be ourselves.