'Music-therapeutic Caregiving': The Necessity of Active Music-making in Clinical Care
Abstract
The authors introduce a new term here, music-therapeutic caregiving (MTC), to describe an active form of music-making by caregivers to and/or with patients during the course of actual caregiving activities. The goal for the patient in such a process is not the performance of music but the performance of a host of activities important for daily living and personal health. While MTC may involve singing on the part of the patient, its major focus is on 'receptive singing,' in other words, patient responsiveness to caregiver singing and the resultant effect this has on compliance, cognition, and emotion. A brief case study of the use of MTC in dementia care is presented, followed by a description of its general features. MTC is an extremely straightforward technique, one that can greatly increase the quality not only of patient care but the caregiver–patient relationship as well. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2020 APA, all rights reserved)