r/musictherapy

I'm working in private practice. I have about 18 hours of client work a week spread across 30 clients. I'm absolutely exhausted, and am really leaning towards needing to cut clients. Thankfully my boss agrees that I can't add any more to my caseload, but 4 of those clients were added recently due to another employee leaving and I had to be stern about not adding more.

I'm exhausted on top of dealing with some health problems, but am scared to drop hours due to needing to pay for things... I'm the financial person due to my partner trying to finish school, and the struggle has really killed any ability for me to feel great in general.

I'm frankly not sure what to do. I know that I'll be leaving this job in the next year due to my partner finishing school/no jobs in their field in the area, but somewhat looking for advice in the meantime.

Baby music therapist here. I’m talking braaaaand new, just started my first MT real job. I noticed that while I was in school and doing internships, all of my supervisors and other MTs I met were frequently doing presentations about their work at conferences, or getting their writing published in journals or books.

I am aware that this may have something to do with earning CBMT credits to maintain one’s certification… However, I personally despise writing long papers, and I don’t really like doing presentations either. I am passionate about doing the actual work of being a music therapist. I like what I do, and I document what I do for clinical purposes. I do not care one bit about getting published… Is it ok to be a music therapist who doesn’t want to be a writer? Is this common? Is there another avenue to earn credits to maintain my CBMT?

thinking of doing a bit of a dissertation on music therapy for a college thing, and for my primary research I'd love to get some opinions and thoughts from people who have actually gone through music therapy, whether they thought it helped or not.

if I were to ask for some opinions, would that be alright/appropriate to ask for, and is anyone up for it?

lmk if not, thanks for your help guys :)

Hey everyone - I had a hard day today at work today. I work at a psych facility for geriatric (memory care unit) and today was just one of those days where one of my clients fought me on everyyyytthhiiinnggg. I have a lot of experience working with adults with ID/DD and children, but not too much with geriatric. I had one particular client calling all of my applications childish (African drumming application - she didn't like the drums were lollipops I think, but those were the only drums I had available) and I was struggling redirecting her. I started with just reinforcing instructions, but it started disrupting the group, so then I moved on to explaining the benefits. Asked her for a suggestion as well - Then I attempted to just tell her that if she doesn't want to participate she doesn't have to and nooonneee of that worked. What is a good way to redirect an elderly client where they do not feel like I am treating them like a child? Is there something I could've done different? I want to make sure that I'm treating each patient with the best of my ability and it was too small of a group for the comments to not be disruptive to the group.

hey y'all! I'm an actor prepping to play a music therapist in a play - I would love to hear some people's journeys into becoming music therapists! What was your music background as young people, what does your day-to-day look like now, do you use Ipads or actual instruments, what age of patients do you typically see (my character is singing to a two year old boy with cerebral palsy) - I want to know everything you're comfortable sharing! Thanks so much :)