Orange Bicycles—A Case Story

Adapting the “Arts for the Blues” Group Intervention for Use in Staff Wellbeing Music Therapy Sessions

Abstract

Since the COVID-19 pandemic, staff wellbeing has been an important issue in healthcare settings. However, reports of the contributions of music therapy to this context are rare. During my MA Music Therapy training, I was able to offer music therapy in an NHS Trust’s staff support service for healthcare workers who were burnt-out, depressed or anxious. In this paper I present a case story, focussing on one individual, “Violet,” and identify some of the significant moments in her therapy. From this story, it seems that music therapy can be a powerful way to support the wellbeing of staff, and this may be a rich new vein of work for music therapists to explore. While the Arts for the Blues was initially developed for psychoanalytic group work, this story shows how it has been successfully adapted for use in these one-to-one, active, improvisatory music therapy sessions. Indeed, the model allowed for the limited number of sessions offered in an NHS context to be fully used, and its ingredients contributed to significant moments of therapeutic change.