Mid-March every year, music therapists in the New England area start to get excited: the annual regional conference for the American Music Therapy Association is almost here. 2012 will be my and my peers first year attending, and not only attending- but also presenting.

For the past nine months, we have been diligently working to collect data that supports our hypothesis that music can be used to treat feelings of isolation in seniors. We have gone to senior centers and collected this data using a self-created questionnaire that assesses whether or not there is a significant rise in self-rated feelings of inclusion, commitment, attention, and accomplishment. The questionnaire is given both before and after a group music therapy session, in hopes that the post scores will show raised levels of the dependent variables.

With only ten days to go until the presentation, we are in crunch time! We meet multiple times a week to gather more data, compile results, and practice our slideshow. We’re both excited and slightly nervous, but overall thrilled at the chance to present what we feel are meaningful results with the music therapy community!

 

We first presented our pilot study at Passages, a music therapy conference of student presenters (shown below), and applied to present at the New England Region conference at the encouragement of our professor, Dr. Peggy Codding. Since then, we have expanded the study to prepare for our upcoming conference, which has primarily professionals presenting.

For more information on the conference, go to the website: www.neramtas.org and click on conferences.

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