Music Psychotherapy

Music Therapy and Psychotherapy at CHM Therapy Services.

Adrienne Pringle and Leah Hunter lead our growing team of Music Therapists. Adrienne also supervises Music Therapy interns, who often complete a portion of their placements at CHM Therapy. Music Therapy can be offered in person, or online.

What is Music Therapy?

Music Therapy is an evidence-based practice where credentialed professionals (Music Therapist Accredited – MTA) use music purposefully within a therapeutic relationship to support development, health, and well-being. MTA’s use music safely and ethically to address individual needs of each client.

What is Music Psychotherapy?

Music Psychotherapy uses music experiences in addition to traditional talk therapy to facilitate the therapeutic process. A Registered Psychotherapist (RP) who is also an accredited Music Therapist (Music Therapist Accredited – MTA), and the client use music to access, process, and bring about positive change in the client’s thinking, feelings, moods, behaviours, and social functioning.

Every session is tailored to meet each client’s needs, agreed upon goals, and experiences. Music has a powerful ability to create connections between individuals, express and reflect emotions, bring forward memories, and process feelings. Clients often worry that they may need to be "musical" or know how to play an instrument or sing in order to benefit from music therapy, but in fact, Musical experience is NOT required. There is no pressure to play an instrument or sing during a session. There are many ways to experience music and all of them are valid.

Who can benefit from Music Psychotherapy?

Music Psychotherapy can support individuals:

• Experiences anxiety, depression, or other diagnosed mental health disorders

• Experiencing Substance abuse

• With relationship, work, school challenges.

• Struggling with the illness or death of a loved one

• Emotional regulation

• Individuals with special needs, such a developmental delays or language barriers,

• It is ideal for all ages, and can be very helpful for younger children.

• Music therapy is great for individual and group work.

What does music psychotherapy look like?

Music Psychotherapist can incorporate aspects of other familiar therapy models such as Acceptance and Commitment Therapy (ACT), CBT, Narrative Therapy along with music interventions like musical improvisation, therapeutic song writing, lyric discussion and analysis, music imaging and more.