At St. Mary’s Hospital for Children, Music Therapy is playing an important role in our mission to improve the health and quality of life of our patients and their families.
With the help of philanthropic supporters, St. Mary’s provides our kids with highly beneficial music therapy activities, including individual sessions as well as group sing-along sessions, using a wide range of therapeutic instruments ideal for children with functional limitations.
2018 has been a time of many exciting developments for our music therapy program. In April, NBC New York ran a news story about our music therapist, Melissa Sandoval and the amazing “legacy recording” music therapy service she is providing to many of our families. The news video can be found here.
Additionally, our music therapy program recently got several major boosts of support thanks to the Theresa Alessandra Russo Foundation, the enCourage Kids Foundation, the Mizzy Jonas Family Foundation, and the Tompkins Charitable Gift Fund – with grants that collectively will provide more programmatic support and allow St. Mary’s to purchase numerous instruments that will further enhance the music therapy activities at our hospital.
Music therapy improves our patients’ quality of life and promotes physical and emotional wellness by reducing stress, alleviating pain, stimulating expression and communication, and promoting physical rehabilitation and learning. And on a more fundamental level, it’s a lot of fun!
