When Dialogue Fails: Music therapy with elderly with neurological degenerative diseases

In a PhD-research from Aalborg University I have used a mixed method case study design, where I integrated quantitative heart beat measurements and a qualitative hermeneutic analysis on responses given by participants in music therapy. In this paper I am not going to present the research. I will use the opportunity to present one single element from the work. This will be a focus on a clinical strategy for building up music therapy sessions with persons who are gradually losing cognitive abilities and suffer from severe neurodegeneration. I shall present four levels or steps in the clinical setting, where different strategies are used in order to compensate for missing memory function and missing abilities to communicate. In addition to being part of the doctoral thesis (Ridder 2003), these ideas are based on clinical music therapy work at a geronto-psychiatric unit since 1995. http://www.musictherapyworld.net/modules/mmmagazine/index.html