Voices ResourcesA website for the worldwide community around the journal Voices: A World Forum for Music Therapy

Thinking about the new column for voices three thoughts came into my mind. I want to share these thoughts with you and may be you can share your reflections on this with me in our discussion section.

The first is that we are successfully this time in Germany in first steps of preparation of acknowledgement of music therapy in health system. For this we needed effect studies in music therapy. In Germany we have a very small tradition of effect research. Due to this colleagues of mine and I contacted US colleagues like Barbara Wheeler. She could give very good information about US colleagues who did even Meta analyses of effect studies i.e. about music therapy and pain like Joke Bradt. For other disorders we could contact European colleagues i.e. Christian Gold and Tony Wigram for music therapy and schizophrenia. With these results it was possible to fulfil tasks and standards of effect studies in disorders and music therapy. Only in our national context we had no chance to include these necessary results into our steps of acknowledgement in health system in that brief time of only some months for each disorder. International networks helped and help very much.

The second thought is about basic music therapy research. Other sciences beside music therapy have large laboratories, millions of Euro or Dollar for basic research with research centres with decades of PhD-students and Post-Doc-researchers. The research groups in music therapy are much smaller. However, in Finland there exists up from next year a Centre of Excellence (CoE) including music therapy research. This is a success also of Jaakko Erkkilä, head of music therapy of University of Jyväskylä / Finland. Decades of researchers will work in the first phase of three years including music therapy researchers from Finland, Denmark, Norway, Australia and Germany. With such centres also basic music therapy research will be possible. Together with researchers of many other sciences this network can really start a unique, interdisciplinary and comprehensive research program. National and international networks of researcher can start together proving and creating new knowledge on a very high level of research standards. Also this can be a model for other European countries including in their excellence-research-centres not only technical, economical, nature and sciences of medicine, also including arts and social sciences in it as a chance of important research about and for human beings.

The third and last thought aroused last week while chatting with US students from Georgia. One student asked about clinical practice and duties of music therapists in Germany. She told, she had the experience that institutions expect very often to serve also art and dance therapy as music therapist. I don't know this in Germany. Music therapists work as music therapists. Of course they can use also dance and painting with music in their therapies. But it is not at all expected from them. Sometimes they have also some administrative duties, duties in co-leading groups in other therapies or leading other methods of relaxation. However, this depends also from the interests, basic knowledge and competencies of each music therapist and is arranged with him or her but not very often expected. In the end of the day I learned here another positive side of clinical practice of music therapy in Germany. The chance for this offered the international context and teaching network we practiced in that case.

Finally help and plenty of chances can be offered by international networks of research, teaching and clinical practice especially in a more or less small professional and research field like music therapy. We could get very important and unique help, we can start unique research projects and I could learn a new benefit of my own system I am working in. What are your experiences or wishes in the field of international networks?

How to cite this page

Wosch, Thomas (2006). International Networks - Help and Chance. Voices Resources. Retrieved January 15, 2015, from http://testvoices.uib.no/community/?q=fortnightly-columns/2006-international-networks-help-and-chance