Wed, Dec 12, 2007
Mind Your Body, The Straits Times
Rousing hearing-impaired with the sound of music
Dr Patsy Tan sings to her child.
There is nothing very special about that, you may think.
But that age-old universal mother-and-child bonding process takes on a whole new meaning when she indulges in it.
And she does not just hum childhood rhymes and ditties either.
Dr Tan is a highly trained Singaporean music therapist, who uses the songs, which she makes up, as a learning tool for her daughter, Antonina Maria Lin.
Antonina, who is four, can already add and subtract and knows her multiplication tables by heart.
'I have songs for phonics, numbers, mathematics. I made up most of these pre-academic songs and I improvised as well,' said Dr Tan.
She began singing lullabies and nursery rhymes to Antonina, using finger puppets to animate her songs, when her daughter was a mere infant.
She did so to stimulate her sense of hearing and her sensory-motor and language development.
As Antonina turned one, Dr Tan started on musical games and activity songs - all without using any recorded music.
'Everything was done live, I made up most of the songs based on her needs,' she said.
To teach Antonina her multiplication tables, for instance, Dr Tan made up a ditty with lyrics like 'One two's two, two two's four, three two's six and four two's eight', sung to the tune of Lightly Row.
The result: Antonina did not just know her school work, but also displayed talents.
By the time she was two, she started singing in perfect pitch, and began making up her own songs.
She also asked to learn the violin when she was 2½ years old. But Dr Tan felt she was too young then and waited till she was 3½.
'I send her for violin lessons not because I want to but because she wants them,' she said."
Now Dr Tan and Antonina enjoy singing and music every day. The little girl loves playing the violin, although she is just a beginner.
But Dr Tan's teaching through music does not end in her home and with her child.
She uses the medium professionally - with hearing-impaired children at the Singapore General Hospital.
Her goal: Using music to help these children hear, speak and learn better.
Dr Tan uses the same methods she does with her daughter at home - singing while playing the piano or percussion instruments - on the hearing-impaired children, most of whom are waiting to enter primary school.
These sessions are held for two hours, once a week.
There are some differences in how she approaches these sessions, though, given the children's disabilities.
One of her methods: She covers her mouth as she sings so the children are forced to listen with their hearing aids, instead of relying on lip-reading.
Six-year-old Muhammad Nihal, who has profound hearing loss in both ears, showed more progress after several of Dr Tan's music sessions than he did after hours of verbal coaching.
Said Nihal's mother, housewife Sitti Nashima, who once spent frustrating hours trying to get her hyperactive son to sit down for lessons: 'Nihal loves music, that's why it works. Music therapy is fantastic! He listens more attentively, his enunciation has improved and he has actually learnt to spell through the songs Dr Tan taught him.'
The science and craft of music therapy - harnessing music to help patients with ailments including depression, cancer or those who have suffered from strokes - is something that Dr Tan spent 10 years studying in the United States.
Her experiences there, where music therapy is much more common and acknowledged by the medical community, included placing and playing a drum on a comatose patient's chest so he could feel the vibrations.
One of her memorable experiences, she said, involved learning how to sing songs by heavy metal band Black Sabbath in order to connect with a troubled youth suffering from traumatic brain injury.
Dr Tan finally managed to help the youth to focus and improve his attention span.
But this happened only after six months of singing and counselling, in the presence of a bodyguard in case she was assaulted by her patient.
As a parting shot, doctor and patient composed a Black Sabbath-inspired song together.
Music therapy cannot cure diseases, but can speed the healing process
A visiting foreign national, who claimed to be a music therapist, recently sold CDs in Singapore priced between $400 and $1,000.
He claimed the music on them could 'cure' diseases and ailments.
Members of the newly formed Singapore Association of Music Therapy were quick to denounce him as a 'mercenary charlatan'.
Besides teaching hearing-impaired children, Dr Patsy Tan uses music therapy to teach her four-year-old daughter Antonina Maria Lim, who knows how to add and subtract.
Music therapists pooh-pooh the notion that ills can be cured by putting on a generic CD of soothing music.
'This person is not a qualified music therapist,' said the association in a statement to the press.
'While passive listening to music is one of the many ways in which music is used, more often than not, active interventions are used, like playing instruments, singing, improvising, composing.'
Trained music therapists take pains to find out about their patient's history, make a diagnosis of what would help the patient and then make a musical prescription.
In Singapore, there are few bona fide music therapists as music as a form of clinical therapy is not viewed seriously.
But the practice is gaining a foothold. The association, with 11 members, aims to increase public awareness and to serve as a contact point for local music therapists.
In January, the Singapore General Hospital (SGH) - where music therapist Dr Patsy Tan is based - started a music therapy programme for hearing-impaired children called Music To The Ears.
Apart from SGH, the small music therapy community here mostly operates outside hospitals and is centred on treating special-needs children in the special schools or at-risk youth.
It is a good start.
Music therapy can help to cut down medical costs. For instance, music can act as a substitute for pain relief medication.
According to a New York Times article published in 2001, United States scientists discovered that Muzak, piped into a New York City intensive care unit, seemed to help lower the mortality rate 8 per cent below the national average.
The same article describes how lullabies played in a neonatal nursery might have helped premature infants gain weight and speed their discharge from dependency units.
Rhythmic music with a strong beat has also proven powerful in treating those with neurological disorders like stroke, cerebral palsy and Parkinson's disease.
Music can also address behavioural issues.
For the past two years, Ms Ng Wang Feng, 30, a freelance music therapist, has been helping at-risk youth at Beyond Social Services with their self-esteem, concentration abilities and listening skills, by getting them to sing in a choir.
'Unlike a music teacher, my focus is not on the music, but on using music as a means to achieve therapeutic goals,' said Ms Ng, who spends just as much time counselling the teenagers as she does singing songs like Imagine by John Lennon. She selects songs not only for the melodies but also for their meaningful lyrics.
She will soon start work with the National Cancer Centre, helping cancer patients with pain management.
However, music cannot replace conventional types of care.
Dr Tan stresses that it is crucial for music therapists to work in tandem with doctors as part of a team for best effects.
'Music therapy is not a cure,' she said. 'If you have cancer or Alzheimer's disease, music cannot cure you, but it can help you to adapt to the situation better.'
