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At Nemours Children’s Hospital, Florida, we offer both music and art therapy. These therapies are evidence-based health services in which music and art are used within a therapeutic relationship to support children’s mental and physical well-being. Each Creative Arts Therapy session is tailored to your child’s interests and is always meant to improve their experience in the hospital.

Benefits of Creative Arts Therapy include:

• Improving Communication: Creative Arts Therapists work to promote artistic avenues of expression to help children maintain connections with siblings, parents and friends, as well as their medical team. Art and music experiences can give kids and their families a safe, nonverbal way to communicate emotions, concerns, anxiety and stressors. An example might include working with one of our Creative Arts Therapists to create music or art to help process difficult emotions that might come up during a hospital admission.
• Maintaining a Positive Outlook: Patients are given opportunities to create original work that can help enhance their mood. Participating in individual or group Creative Arts Therapy sessions instills a real and continued sense of hope in both our patients and their families. Your child may work with an art therapist to create meaningful artwork to include as part of their room or write songs with a music therapist during a long hospitalization.
• Promoting a Sense of Control: Sometimes children get few choices when it comes to when and how their medical treatments occur. Creative Arts Therapy can help kids experience a sense of control over their hospitalization through making choices for instruments to play, art materials to use and activities to engage in.
• Enhancing Engagement: Children can go through periods of decreased motivation in their treatment. Creative Arts Therapists can help kids to engage mentally or physically during treatments, while also being sensitive to their physical and emotional limitations. One way that our Creative Arts Therapists inspire motivation is through prolonged art and music projects, such as learning an instrument and art installations that allow a child to have a creative outlet during their hospital stay.
• Decreasing Pain and Anxiety: Creative Arts Therapists are trained to work within their specialized modality and can offer patients ways to manage their pain. These sessions offer a space to validate children’s emotional states by reflecting their experiences through music or art. Pain management techniques include relaxation exercises, passive music listening, and active art and music making for distraction.

You can request a Creative Arts Therapy visit through your nurse, physician, child life specialist or patient care technician.