Trauma, Resilience, Safety (TRS): A Music Psychotherapy Model for Addressing Illness Burden in Oncology

Abstract

Medical Music Psychotherapy (MMPT) is a cutting-edge emergent model as practiced at the Louis Armstrong Music Therapy Department and Center for Music & Medicine at Mount Sinai Beth Israel in New York City, in which an eclectic mix of psychotherapeutic models merge with music experiences as a medium and facilitator of the therapeutic relationship/alliance. Radiation oncology is an area long-neglected in music therapy practice with concerns specific to a particularly fragile subpopulation in the care of people with cancer. A discreet symptomatology resulting from implications of the diagnosis, the disease, compounded by the resultant symptomatology from chemotherapy as well as radiation therapy itself may contribute to the fragility of an already challenged population, many of whom also receive surgery during their treatment trajectory. This dissertation will present and analyze the outcomes and implications of an internal review board- approved randomized control trial, that has made a critical contribution to the development and implementation of medical music psychotherapy-based oncology paradigm- TRS Trauma, Resilience, Safety: a Music Psychotherapy Model for Addressing Illness Burden in Oncology. The study’s theoretical and clinical bases, and influencing underpinnings will be explained and explored. Present theory and praxis of music psychotherapy in a fragile population where allopathic medicine and mind/body constructs join to address symptom management, and pre-emptive treatment for anxiety and distress, as well as varied etiologies of emotional trauma and post traumatic stress are presented. Music psychotherapy’s capacity to address anxiety in cancer patients has not been sufficiently described. This study evaluated a protocolized music psychotherapy intervention’s impact on anxiety and distress experienced by patients undergoing Computerized Tomography (CT) Simulation. With a detailed trial inclusive of a subsequent protocolized radiation oncology music therapy intervention, resultant outcomes reflect how the music psychotherapy intervention significantly reduced anxiety and distress in newly diagnosed head & neck and breast cancer patients, with greater effect in subgroups with higher baseline anxiety and distress. While continued research on MMPT’s effects in radiation oncology is warranted, this focus on emotional trauma and its sequelae as emergent and seminal to the fragile treatment of oncology patient procedures, provides a foundation for the subsequent TRS model.