Library
Music Therapy
- Music Therapy in Palliative Care: What It Is For, and Why It Is Hard to Measure
June 16, 2026
Hospices employ music therapists for reasons that do not fit an outcome scale. What the work involves, and the measurement problem behind it.
- Training as a Music Therapist: The Postgraduate Route and What It Demands
June 4, 2026
A masters, supervised placements, personal therapy, and a very small profession at the end of it. What the UK and US routes each demand.
- Music Therapy for Autistic Children: Outcome Measures and the Framing Argument
May 22, 2026
What counts as a good result has changed, and autistic adults have had a great deal to say about it. Why no effect size appears on this page.
- Music Therapy for Depression and Anxiety in Adults: Where the Evidence Sits
May 15, 2026
Adult mental health is the use people assume is best evidenced. It is not, and the reasons are comparators, blinding and who reaches a trial.
- Dementia Choirs and Singing Groups: What They Offer and What Has Been Measured
May 4, 2026
I run two of these. What a good one looks like from the inside, and why the research behind them is thinner than the coverage suggests.
- Personalised Playlists for Dementia: A Headphones Intervention, Not a Therapy
April 28, 2026
A tablet, a pair of headphones and songs from someone's twenties. What that is, how to build one carefully, and why it is not music therapy.
- Music Therapy After Stroke: Walking, Speech and Mood, Graded Separately
April 17, 2026
One outcome after stroke has strong trial evidence and the rest do not. Keeping gait velocity apart from the claims that travel alongside it.
- Music Before Surgery: An Unusually Clean Result on an Unusually Soft Outcome
April 15, 2026
Twenty six trials, 2,051 patients, anxiety 5.72 STAI-S units lower. Why this review carries no certainty rating, and what that omission means.
- Music Therapy for Dementia: What the 2025 Cochrane Review Actually Found
April 10, 2026
Thirty studies, 1,720 people randomised, a small effect on low mood and none on agitation. The 2025 review in full, including the row nobody quotes.
- Rhythmic Auditory Stimulation: The Strongest Evidence in Arts and Health
April 9, 2026
Gait velocity 11.34 m/min faster across 9 trials and 268 people. What the trials measured, who it suits, and why the unit must not be converted.
- How to Find a Music Therapist: Registers, Referrals and What to Ask
April 6, 2026
Start at a statutory register rather than a search engine. Routes country by country, NHS and school access, fees, and what to ask first.
- What Happens in a Music Therapy Session: The Room, the Instruments and the Hour
April 5, 2026
Quieter and slower than most people expect. What an assessment covers, why improvisation dominates, and what the therapist writes down afterwards.
- Music Therapy: What It Is, Who Delivers It, and What the Trials Show
April 1, 2026
A registered music therapist is not a visiting singer. What the protected title means, and where the trial evidence is strong, thin, or actually null.
- Music Therapy or a Singing Group: How to Tell Which One You Are Being Offered
March 27, 2026
Both can help, only one is regulated, and the words get used interchangeably. Six checks that tell a clinical intervention from a good afternoon.
Art and Drama Therapy
- Craft, Making and Mental Health: Knitting, Pottery and Men's Sheds
July 17, 2026
Community making is not therapy and does not need to be. What draws people in, what has been measured, and how the claims inflate.
- Therapeutic Writing and Photovoice: Useful, Unregistered and Often Mislabelled
July 10, 2026
Expressive writing and participatory photography are neither of them registered therapies. What they involve, and the consent trap in one.
- Dramatherapy in Mental Health Services: Wards, Forensic Units and Evidence
July 8, 2026
Secure and inpatient settings employed dramatherapists long before the research arrived. What the work looks like there, and how thin the base is.
- Dramatherapy: The Fourth Protected Title and the Least Known One
July 1, 2026
Role, story and improvisation used clinically, on the same statutory register as music therapy. What it involves and where it is actually offered.
- Art Therapy During Cancer Treatment: Use, Access and the Certainty Problem
June 23, 2026
Oncology has a large arts literature and very little of it is strong. What the work is used for alongside treatment, graded claim by claim.
- Art Therapy for Children: Schools, CAMHS and Who the Picture Belongs To
June 22, 2026
Consent works differently when the client is eight. Where children are seen, who agrees to it, and what happens to the work a child makes.
- Training as an Art Therapist: UK and US Routes, and What the Credentials Mean
June 9, 2026
A protected title on one side of the Atlantic and a patchwork of credentials on the other. What each route requires, and what it does not.
- Art Therapy for Trauma and PTSD: What the Controlled Evidence Supports
May 29, 2026
The claims here run well ahead of the trials. What is genuinely established, what is borrowed from adjacent fields, and what is unstudied.
- Art Therapy for Psychosis: The MATISSE Trial and Why Services Still Offer It
May 8, 2026
Four hundred and seventeen people, three arms, no benefit on either primary outcome. What that trial settled, and the question it left open.
- What Happens in an Art Therapy Session: Materials, Silence and the Image
May 7, 2026
Nobody teaches you technique and nobody interprets your picture at you. The shape of the hour, and what happens to the work once it ends.
- Art Therapy or an Art Class: The Difference Is Not Talent
May 5, 2026
A painting group and a clinical intervention can look identical from the doorway. The checks that separate them, and why both are worth having.
- Art Therapy and Art Psychotherapy: The Regulated Profession Behind the Word
April 20, 2026
Two protected titles cover one profession, and a craft afternoon covers none of them. What UK regulation guarantees, and why no fee figure is quoted.
Dance and Movement
- Seated and Chair Based Dance: What Adapting It Changes, and What It Cannot Replace
May 19, 2026
Adapting downwards changes the room, not just the movement. Sightlines, physical assistance and the one thing a seated class honestly cannot train.
- Dance and Health: Exercise, Therapy and a Social Night Out Are Three Different Things
May 13, 2026
Three quite different activities share one heading. What separates them, why the title is not protected, and the figure this site will not print.
- Movement and Multiple Sclerosis: Fatigue, Balance and the Limits of the Current Work
May 11, 2026
A relapsing condition, a self reported main outcome and heat that makes symptoms worse. Three reasons this research is unusually hard, and where it has got to.
- Dance After Stroke: Feasibility Studies, Small Samples and What Would Need to Be Shown
May 8, 2026
A feasibility study answers whether a trial can be run, not whether the thing works. Why almost all the dance and stroke research is that first kind.
- Dance for Depression: The Mislabelled Effect Size, and What the Review Actually Reports
May 6, 2026
Three trials, 147 people, very low quality, and no firm conclusions. The number in circulation is not an effect size at all, and here is what it really is.
- Tango and Parkinson's Research: How a Small Striking Finding Becomes a Global Claim
April 30, 2026
The claim travels much further than the study. Why no tango figure appears here, and the five stages by which a small result turns into a settled fact.
- Dance for Parkinson's: The Best Supported Corner of Dance Research, and What That Means
April 24, 2026
Best supported is a comparative statement, not a strong one. Why this corner has more trials than the rest, and why no effect size appears on this page.
- Dance, Balance and Falls: A Physical Outcome, and Why That Changes the Argument
April 16, 2026
Falls are counted, not scored on a questionnaire. Why that makes this the most testable dance claim, and why the strongest version is about exercise.
- Dance Movement Psychotherapy: The Profession, the Training and the Missing Protected Title
April 12, 2026
Postgraduate training and an accredited register, but no title protected in law. What the profession involves, and what checking a practitioner actually means.
- Finding a Dance for Health Class: How They Are Organised and What to Ask
April 8, 2026
No register exists on the community side, so every check is one you make yourself. Where these classes come from, and the question people forget to ask.
Arts on Prescription
- Creative Health Policy and Reports: What They Are For, and Why They Are Not Evidence
June 13, 2026
A policy report argues for something. A review measures it. Six checks that tell the two apart, and the citation error that outruns every correction.
- Who Pays for Arts on Prescription, and What Happens When the Money Stops
June 11, 2026
Free at the point of use means somebody else is paying, usually on a grant with an end date. Where the money comes from and why schemes keep closing.
- Arts on Prescription: What the Term Means and How a Place Is Arranged
June 7, 2026
Nobody writes a prescription and nothing is dispensed. How a referred place on a creative course works, and where the widely quoted savings figures came from.
- What a Ten Week Arts Course Involves: The Shape of a Scheme, Week by Week
June 5, 2026
Most schemes run 8 to 10 weeks and follow the same arc. What happens in each part of it, including the week most people find hardest.
- Arts on Prescription Around the World: What Is Documented in Each Country
June 2, 2026
Four countries, four ways of organising the same idea, and one recurring trap: quoting a scheme's numbers with another phase's dates attached to them.
- Museum Prescriptions: How Gallery and Museum Schemes Run, and What Has Been Evaluated
June 1, 2026
Object handling, closed sessions, and a building people will be seen entering. How museum schemes run, and where the self reported numbers part company.
- Singing for Lung Health: An Unusually Well Defined Intervention Without a Locked Figure
May 27, 2026
Breath control, posture and a weekly group. What the programmes involve, why they are easier to test than most arts activity, and why no number appears here.
- Does Arts on Prescription Save Money? Following the £216 Back to Its Arithmetic
May 26, 2026
Follow the sums: £42,423 divided by 90 patients, set against £180,000 divided by 500. Where the savings figures came from and what they actually describe.
- How to Get Referred to an Arts Scheme: The Specific Ask That Works
March 31, 2026
Vague requests disappear. The exact wording that gets a call back, who to say it to, and what to do when the honest answer is that nothing exists locally.
- Social Prescribing Explained: What a Link Worker Can and Cannot Arrange
March 30, 2026
Link workers connect people to things that already exist locally. What that means in practice, and why arts is a small corner of a much wider job.
- Reading Arts in Health Research: Effect Sizes, Certainty and Where a Figure Came From
March 27, 2026
Eighty one trials and 5,576 people can still add up to very low certainty. The checks that separate a real arts in health finding from a repeated one.
Arts in Hospitals and Care
- Starting an Arts Programme in a Care Setting: The Practical Page for Managers
July 24, 2026
Programmes fail on logistics, not on the quality of the work. Insurance, safeguarding, money, and who owns the thing once the enthusiast has left.
- Live Music on Hospital Wards: The Consent and Noise Questions Nobody Raises
July 21, 2026
On an open ward the audience cannot leave. What that means for musicians, and the half minute rule that separates a good programme from a thoughtless one.
- Creative Work at the End of Life: Legacy Pieces, Memory Books and Who They Belong To
July 19, 2026
Making something that outlives its maker raises questions nobody asks until afterwards. Who owns it, who else is in it, and what was actually agreed.
- Consent and Safeguarding in Arts in Health: Capacity, Photographs and What Cannot Be Shared
July 16, 2026
Somebody who cannot consent cannot agree to being photographed, and a relative's permission does not reliably extend to publication. The rules that follow.
- Arts for Carers and Health Staff: Enthusiasm Running Well Ahead of the Evidence
July 14, 2026
The fastest growing part of this field and the thinnest evidenced. Why staff wellbeing programmes are hard to test, and the question to ask before funding one.
- Arts in Hospitals: What the Programmes Are For, and What They Can Claim
July 3, 2026
One 1984 study of 23 matched pairs still underwrites a forty year claim. What hospital arts programmes do, and which of their claims hold up.
- Arts in Mental Health Inpatient Units: Therapy, Occupation, and Knowing Which You Are Offered
June 29, 2026
A ward art group and a registered therapy can look identical from the doorway. What separates them, and what the largest UK trial actually found.
- Creative Activity in Dementia Care: What the 2025 Review Changed, and What to Expect
June 26, 2026
Moderate certainty evidence of no effect on agitation, a small effect on low mood, and nothing lasting four weeks. What that means for a weekly session.
- Arts in Care Homes: Who Delivers It, and What Is Actually Expected of a Home
June 24, 2026
Activity sits within a home's wider duties, not clinical care. Who runs it, what good looks like, and the question families should ask about staffing.
- Does Hospital Art Speed Recovery? One 1984 Study, Read Line by Line
June 18, 2026
Forty six patients, 23 matched pairs, one operation, one season, and no artwork in it at all. What Ulrich 1984 found, including the row nobody quotes.