The Schubert Dressing: Healing Through Music, Part 2 of 2

We are privileged to again invite Ms. Claire Oppert of France to introduce her fascinating experiences in practicing music therapy. “I did a university internship at the Sainte-Périne Hospital in Paris, in the palliative care department of Dr. Jean-Marie Gomas. I worked for 9 years with end-of-life patients. At that time, there was a major event, which oriented ‘The Schubert Dressing’: it was my encounter with a demented resident, painful, very aggressive. There was no other way to dress her wound, than to play Schubert during her care!”

“Following this extraordinary experience with this lady, who was a great artist and whom I accompanied until the end of her life, Dr. Jean-Marie Gomas and I decided to do a clinical study. Schubert was the first sensory counter-stimulation, because that's what neurosciences call it. But there was Schubert, there was Bach, Mozart, there was also romantic music, jazz, world music, all kinds of music - African, Jewish, Arab. I even went into rock, rap and even metal. After our 5-year study of ‘Schubert Dressing,’ in which we studied and analyzed treatments on 112 patients in pain with music and without music in order to compare them, it was concluded that the presence of the cello at the moments of painful care, at the moments of painful peaks even, reduces pain and anxiety by 10% to 50%.”

“Really the music acted as a powerful morphine. The pain input is diverted by the positive input of the right stimulation by producing hormones - serotonin, dopamine. It is something extremely scientific and is being increasingly proven, that music can not only divert pain, but that it also allows brain plasticity. It has been observed that, for example, a certain number of hours of music can improve the circulation between the two hemispheres. And obviously, musical treatment serves as a complete neural treatment.”

“I receive far more than I give. And that's with every person I meet. ‘Thank you’ because the time that was shared, is unique, is irreplaceable, is so profoundly human in its density, that we are fulfilled on both sides.”