A new Journal on Music and Medicine

Most people know about the transformative effect of music because of their own experience (some music lifts your mood, some can move you tears, some can energise you, some can support you in meditation, some can stimulate your intellect and so on). But what most people don’t know is that music is used in clinical contexts all the time, for example in end of life care, with premature babies, people suffering from head injuries or trauma, in surgery or post-op, to relieve pain, cancer progression, people with dementia and so on. Research carried out in all these fields hasn’t been easily accessible because it’s been scattered in various journals across different disciplines. So in 2009, the International Association of Music and Medicine (IAMM) was set up to address this by creating a forum for discussion through the journal of Music and Medicine, amongst other things.

IAMM had their inaugural meeting June 2009 in Limerick, Ireland and there were research papers on a range of clinical settings (such as for breast cancer patients, dementia, stroke patients, end of life care, and working with grief). The programme for the day can be found here. The journal of Music and Medicine has put together a special issue on music and cancer care which should be out later in 2010 or 2011. You can register on their website to receive the journal FREE until 2011 if you want to take a look at the content.