Art as a Path to Wellness groups allow for stress management and the processing of emotions that arise within the hospital setting and are offered to visitors, caregivers, patients, and families.
Music therapy is the systematic clinical application of music to improve a patient’s physical, cognitive, emotional, and social well-being. It combines music and therapeutic techniques and aids in the physiological, psychological, and emotional well-being of the individual during treatment of an illness. AMI’s music program includes music therapy, live music performances, overhead music, a relaxation channel, education, and research.
According to Fattorini, “A lot of music therapy patients are neurology patients and recovering from stroke. Very often they can’t speak. Music therapists work with specific methods developed for stroke patients. Melodic intonation and rhythmic stimulatory programs are used to motivate the patient and activate the brain. The human brain can sing a sequence of words that it can’t speak. After the brain sings the sequence, the patient can stop singing and can speak the words. Sometimes after only three sessions, a patient can speak. But they have to first sing the sentence. A simple sentence like ‘Give me a glass of water.’”
Music therapy has been active in research for using rhythmic auditory stimulation to improve gait in patients with multiple sclerosis, as well.
The Performing Arts program brings a variety of music, dance, and theater performances to the hospital. Programs are held Monday through Friday, during the lunch hour. There are approximately 370 performances a year.
Professional musicians, as well as community and employee musicians, perform throughout the hospital. Musicians from Cleveland Music School Settlement, Apollo’s Fire, Cleveland Orchestra, Cleveland Pops Orchestra, and Roots of American Music have performed. Dance is an artistic expression that involves the movement of the body. Often done with rhythm and to music, dance expresses ideas, emotions, and energy. The movement itself can be healing and therapeutic, while the observation of dance is uplifting and energizing.
AMI has hosted performances of several dance companies, including GroundWorks DanceTheater, a local dance company that collaborates with the clinic to bring in the Dance Exchange, whose Tools for Health include a two-day workshop which put theory into practice for using dance with patients.
Fattorini admits she didn’t recognize the value of the program when it began. “When I started this I really did not know how important it was,” she says. “I am a physician, a doctor, and didn’t know how to shape this, but it’s almost shaping itself because there’s such a need and a passion in people who are receiving and giving. There is a huge passion in employees, who are equally hungry for this type of program. Nurses who work long hours in a very tense and stressful job. They want to prevent burnout. So they call an art therapist and they do a group arts therapy program. It’s really beautiful. They’re all artists; there’s a lot of talent. They just need to be given an opportunity to show it.”
Fattorini also oversaw the establishment of an Arts in Medicine Program at the Cleveland Clinic Abu Dhabi, which opened its doors in 2013. She is excited about the future. “I think we are in a new era where we are restoring the connection between the arts and health care,” she says. “I think people were so mesmerized by the development of technology the last 50 to 60 years that they forgot about the human soul. When you say that we’re trying to awaken the soul of health care and the soul of the hospitals by integration of the arts into the health care, people see this sometimes as a soft approach. I don’t think it’s soft. I think it’s realistic. I think we forgot what is important and I think this is now the right moment to awaken the conscience and awareness of the people about the importance of art, almost as a symbol of changing the culture in health care.”
Cleveland Clinic has been honored at the National Corporate Theatre Fund Chairman’s Awards Gala in New York. The recognition was presented to Dr. Toby Cosgrove, president and CEO, for the clinic’s support of the arts particularly as it relates to the Art and Medicine Institute’s program. In his acceptance speech, Cosgrove said, “We’re proud of our own Arts & Medicine Institute, which brings the power of music, dance, theater, and visual arts to our patients, our visitors and our employees to enrich their experience.”
Fattorini hopes that other hospitals will follow Cleveland Clinic’s lead to create a global movement of changing the culture of health care.
This article is updated from its initial publication in Brain World Magazine’s print edition.
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- Arts and Music Education for Everyone: Its Manifold Benefits
- Facing the Music: The Power of Rhythmic Movements
- Get Yer Ya-Ya’s Out: How Dancing Creates Freedom in the Body and Mind
- Healing Music: An Interview with Stanley Jordan
- Music, Rhythm, and the Brain
- Notes of Healing: The Power of Music as Therapy
