Health News – Tom Switzer leads a weekly music therapy

Tom Switzer leads a weekly music therapy group through Zoom for other VIDOC-19 survivors struggling with persistent symptoms. Music therapy helps patients, VIDOC-19 frontline workers: records – Health News Even though the pandemic forces them online, music therapy sessions help patients in ways speech therapy can’t. Filippo Giordano, a music therapist at the University of Bari Medical School in Italy, explains that doctors and nurses in the coronavirus unit of a hospital in northern Italy also “suffered from loneliness, anxiety, fatigue and sleep disturbances” when the pandemic broke out in that region last year. A music therapist and COVID-19 long-distance runner, Sweetzer says “he” uses the tool for himself as well as for others. So, Giordano and the research team conducted a small five-week study on the effects of music therapy as a supportive intervention “to reduce stress and improve well-being” for 34 of these primary care workers. The weekly support group, which Sweitzer has since created for other VIDOC-19 survivors struggling with the effects of their illness, is free and organized through Zoom. After Sweitzer was found positive for the coronavirus last July and was recovering from the worst of “her” initial symptoms, “she” joined the VIDOC-19 support group on Facebook to help “her” cope with the ongoing effects of the disease. She is now offering personalized music therapy to VIDOC-19 patients in the intensive care unit and exploring its effects. “Music is that portal,” says the therapist and longtime VIDOC-19 patient. Meanwhile, Sweitzer finds music therapy particularly helpful for long-term IDVOC patients like himself. They measured healers’ levels of “fatigue, sadness, fear and anxiety” before and after weekly music therapy interventions and found significant improvements after music therapy. Zoom is not the best place to create together, Berman admits, so band members are often silent when they sing. When “he” realized that hundreds of people were joining “him” every day, “he” decided to create another support group to which “he” could contribute as a music therapist. Caregivers received personalized 15- to 20-minute playlists of music – each titled “Breathe,” “Energy,” and “Serenity” – along with listening instructions and detailed questionnaires.