Music Therapy

When you partner with CARTSS, a board-certified music therapist will be part of the regular team of creative arts therapists to provide individual and group therapy to your patients.

What is music therapy?

Music therapy is a powerful, evidence-based treatment that will elevate your patients’ quality of life. Regardless of musical skill or background, music therapy:

  • Improves mental, physical, emotional, & spiritual health

  • Alleviates feelings of isolation

  • Fosters positive social connections

What is a music therapy session like?

Music therapy may include: 

  • Active music-making (like singing or playing instruments) 

  • Exploring emotions and memories that arise when listening to music

  • Reflecting on lyrics

  • Songwriting

When facilitated by a skilled, certified therapist, music therapy can create an extremely positive group experience for patients struggling with severe and diverse mental, intellectual, mood, and substance-abuse issues.

How does music therapy benefit your patients?

Music therapy helps patients alleviate pain and develop healthy emotional coping skills through creative expression and positive social connection.

Throughout history, music has been used to mark momentous events that evoke every emotion from joy to grief and to create beautiful community experiences.

In a hospital setting, many patients struggle with depression and feelings of isolation. Music therapy is an effective way to lift spirits and foster patients’ healthy social connections with their therapists and peers. We often hear patients, regardless of the severity of their situation, saying they look forward to music therapy.

Elevated Care

Rather than being limited to the specialization of a single, in-house recreational therapist, your patients will benefit from a range of creative arts therapies when you partner with CARTSS. With our patient care package, a regular rotation of experienced, board-certified creative arts therapists will join your on-going, interdisciplinary patient care team.

Along with arts, dance, and recreational therapy, your patients can rely on regular music therapy sessions.

Our business model is uniquely suited to treating a broad range of patients. Whereas not all therapeutic modalities meet the needs of individual patients, the regular rotation of CARTSS therapists makes it much more likely that all patients will have access to treatments and providers that resonate with them. For example, some patients might excel with music therapy, whereas others find the most healing in a non-verbal movement therapy. With CARTSS, you’re never limited to one or the other.

Experienced, Board-Certified Music Therapists 

CARTSS music therapists hold Music Therapy Board Certifications (MT-BC) and have years of experience leading group and individual therapy.

As highly-educated mental health professionals, our music therapists are better equipped to handle challenging group dynamics than a volunteer who has been trained solely in music.

Skilled Group Therapy for People Experiencing a Wide Range of Mental Health Conditions

CARTSS music therapists are adept at providing compassionate group therapy to a room that may include people actively hallucinating, suffering from substance withdrawal, or experiencing acute symptoms from mood disorders.

Though such a group dynamic can be (understandably) overwhelming even for seasoned medical professionals, our therapists excel at providing a safe, empathetic treatment environment for all patients.

How does music therapy benefit your hospital, clinic, or treatment facility?

CARTSS brings stability.

The traditional, in-house recreational therapist role is infamous for how often it’s cut as soon as patient census drops. It also has a notoriously high turnover rate, as the pressures of the job often lead to burnout. Short-staffed, the frequency of group therapy usually drops off and the lack of regular treatment can lead to disruptive patient behavior and even greater pressure on your hospital or clinic staff. 

CARTSS replaces the need to continually recruit, train, and rehire for this role.

Stability Eases Job Pressure & Cuts Onboarding Costs

Each CARTSS contract gives you a regular rotation of skilled, licensed therapists and social workers. This will prevent interruptions in therapeutic treatment, strengthen your interdisciplinary patient care team, and ease the burden on your nursing staff and in-house social workers. Everyone from your patients to your orderlies to your HR department will benefit from this consistent, high-quality, reliable care. 

The stability we provide is why it’s not uncommon for our contracts to be renewed for more than a decade. Hospitals save significant sums when they can drop the costs associated with onboarding a new, in-house activity therapist every 2-3 years.

Furthermore, we’re confident in our ability to provide stability even in times of crisis. For instance, CARTSS maintained a 99.1% delivery rate throughout the course of the COVID-19 crisis.

Why Partner With CARTSS

For more than 30 years, CARTSS has been supporting patients and hospitals with its unique, highly-effective creative arts therapy treatment model.

We have led more than 80,000 group therapy sessions in 10 different hospital and community organization settings.

Our mission is to provide a dynamic solution for mental health programs so that the restorative nature of the creative arts cultivates stability within individuals and communities. You can learn more about us here.

Contact us

Contact us

Ready to bring effective, stable group therapy to your organization? Please reach out.