July 26, 2020 | Blogs and News
By Mireille K. — 3 min read — Interview with CMF Music Therapist Coordinator Jenna Bollard
Jenna Bollard is the Music Therapy program coordinator at Children’s Music Fund. Her passion for Music Therapy blossomed when she was just a sophomore in high school, and now her life’s mission is to provide Music Therapy to sick children as a coping mechanism for their difficult journeys.
After receiving her bachelor’s degree for Music Therapy from Berklee College of Music and her master’s from New York University, Bollard began working with nonprofits like Children’s Music Fund so she could spread awareness of Music Therapy’s benefits and share her personal healing strategies.
Bollard has been a performer all her life, surrounding herself with music at any chance she gets. But it took a painful and eye-opening tragedy in her life to spark her curiosity and fervor for Music Therapy.
“My grandpa had Alzheimer’s disease and when he was in the end stages of this condition, music continued to reach him, bring back his memories and connect him to the world.”
Growing up, Bollard’s grandfather would play the harmonica with her, serenading his grandchild with what she called his “beautiful Frank Sinatra type voice,” and telling her stories about his life through the melody and lyricism of music.
She says that while “at the very end of his life he was unable to speak with us, a song came on the radio in the hospital room and he started to copy the melody of the song. Otherwise, he was totally unresponsive.”
This miraculous window into the mind made Bollard focus on Music Therapy research in order to understand our brain’s connection with music and how it can heal the chronically ill.
Despite the ongoing pandemic, Bollard emphasizes the importance of incorporating music into our everyday lives and using Telehealth Music Therapy sessions to our advantage.
“Music can help shift your mood, so when listening, tune into how your mind and body respond to different songs by focusing on how your breathing changes and how it makes you feel,” she says.
Science has proven that music can alter our emotions and Bollard says, “It has to do with our serotonin levels. Our serotonin level increases, cortisol level decreases and endorphins, feel-good chemicals, release and make you happier!”
Being in sync with music is very important, and for music therapists like Bollard, understanding where a patient is emotionally helps them find the best way to bring peace to the child.
“It’s called the Iso principle – we meet them, if they are in a sad mood, we alter our body language or how we are talking to them and gradually we shift them to a new place by changing the music.”
Bollard, as a board-certified Music Therapist, has conducted research on the ways Music Therapy can help a patient during many aspects of hospitalization, specifically during painful and anxiety-provoking procedures.
During a medical procedure, Music Therapy provides an opportunity for refocusing. “When you are being surrounded by music and you have that to focus on, you worry less about what’s going on during the procedure.
There is a beautiful video of a little girl getting an EEG who was having the electrodes placed, which can be super uncomfortable, especially for those with sensory sensitivities but she began singing, pouring her heart into every word and every melody, and it got her through the entire procedure when otherwise it would have been really challenging.”
Just as important to Bollard is Music Therapy’s ability to alter a patient’s pain levels. In 2017, a meta-analysis was published combining 758 different studies that mentioned Music Therapy as a way of managing chronic pain. In it, all of the studies demonstrated a decrease in self-reported pain and an improvement in the patient’s quality of life.
As a Music Therapist, Bollard understands how difficult pain can be to manage and how specific and subjective it is to each individual patient.
She says, “we measure pain with the self-reporting method with the medical pain scale, a 0-10 scale where the child points to what most connects to what they are feeling. We do it at the beginning and end of a Music Therapy session and we find a reduction of pain because there is emotional pain and anxiety pain and they all connect to our bodily pain.”
For Jenna, this proves that the true depth and power in Music Therapy comes from the fact that, “it captures the whole person, music touches the entire person – the brain, the thought processes, the chemical reactions. It soothes the emotional components and reaches any of those strains as well. On a psychological level helping us regulate our heart rate and respiratory level and chemically, it releases natural painkillers too.”
This connection between mind, body, and soul is often overlooked, but proves to be one of the greatest factors in easing pain with Music Therapy. Bollard speaks of a popular area of research in the medical community known as psycho-immunology.
“This is research that quantifies how the mind is directly connected to the body. If we manage our stress and anxiety, we are taking care of our bodies.
“We can be feeding the disease or fighting the disease based on how we take care of our mental and emotional health.”
“Music in its nature has the ability to engage the whole person, so we can really see the ways that music can weave in and out of the different physical and emotional obstacles people may have clinically, and how music helps connect the two of them together.”
Having a treatment modality that addresses all these parts simultaneously is what makes it truly impactful and important in utilizing for our CMF Kids.
Previously a music therapist and now the Music Therapy program coordinator for Children’s Music Fund, Bollard was drawn to the organization because she believed in working with those who shared her same powerful mission.
“I really believe in the Children’s Music Fund’s mission to provide children with healing supportive services and also to help in the research efforts as well as creating job opportunities for Music Therapists.”
Her special message to all the CMF Kids out there, “Listen to yourself, listen to your own energy levels, and know how you’re feeling will change, but music will always be there for you, no matter where you are!”
To allow more CMF Kids to experience the magic of music and it’s healing powers, donate here!
~ Thank you to Jenna Bollard, Children’s Music Fund’s Music Therapy program coordinator, for taking the time to be interviewed and share her story.~