Last week we had the honour of listening to the magnificent Sally Watson, Senior Therapist and Neurologic Music Therapist, at Chroma in the latest of our NeuroHealth External Speaker Webinar Series.
Chroma is the UK’s only national provider of creative arts therapies, offering art psychotherapy, drama therapy, music therapy and neurologic music therapy. Sally’s talk looked at developing a better understanding of each of these therapies, their benefits to neurorehabilitation and how they can support our clients’ rehabilitation goals.
The substantial evidence and research on the effectiveness of these therapies were discussed alongside case studies which demonstrated the benefits that art therapy can bring through haptic touch perception enabling nonverbal access to psychological and sensorimotor processes impacted by TBI, thereby helping clients with emotional expression, socialisation, emotional adaptation to mental and physical changes, and supporting communication in a creative and nurturing environment.
Also, how dramatherapy could help support social reintegration where TBI had led to a client’s withdrawal from social contacts and the community so improving their psychological health and acceptance of, and adjustment to, life post-injury.
We also looked at the differences between music therapy and neurologic music therapy, which Sally is clearly very passionate about, and the outcomes that these can have on psychological, social and functional rehabilitation goals.
The high levels of engagement seen in clients in the creative therapies certainly advocates for their early introduction into a client’s rehabilitation journey, and for creative therapists to be a key member of the client’s multidisciplinary team.
Thank you Sally for such an interesting and enlightening talk!
