Evidence-Based Music Therapy: Clinical Practice

Abstract

As students learn and new professionals establish themselves in the field, they often refine their ability to understand and communicate the ever-present question of “what is “music therapy?” Furthermore, many might be seeking to better understand and communicate what music therapy looks like in practice. In the e-book Evidence-Based Music Therapy: Clinical Practice, Robertson and Standley present a collection of brief but comprehensive case examples that illustrate the music therapy treatment process and what it looks like for many of the populations that music therapists commonly serve. The authors have curated an impressive 50 case examples across 24 areas of practice. The authors identify music therapy students and new professionals as the main audiences for the book. With these audiences in mind, a noticeable strength of the book is that each case is structured to provide a comprehensive picture of the treatment process. In each case, the authors define goals, objectives, and assessment strategies. They go on to provide evidence (references) for selected therapeutic music experiences, share sample session procedures and plans with implementation strategies, and show explicit processes of evaluation and documentation. This layout serves to reinforce terminology and clinical processes that students are learning to apply in addition to following the American Music Therapy Association (AMTA) Standards of Clinical Practice.