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CMN Supports Music Therapy at the Marillac Campus for Mental Health

The Marillac Mental Health Clinic is the University of Kansas Medical Center’s inpatient pediatric psychiatric center, serving kids 4 – 17. Last year, Marillac served over 3,000 pediatric patients in the Kansas City area struggling with mental health issues ranging from anxiety and depression to ADHD, Autism, and suicidal ideation. Through Marillac’s services, kids receive the treatment they need to overcome some of the most difficult issues one can face. 

This March, we celebrate Music Therapy Awareness Month and the work that Marillac is doing with its music therapy program to improve kid’s lives. Music therapists at Marillac work to address a variety of goals with their patients, such as increasing self-expression, building effective communication, and creating positive coping skills. In the music therapy room, patients are able to work through traumas through a variety of effective techniques, such as lyric analysis, songwriting, group instrument play, and music-assisted relaxation.

This past year, Children’s Miracle Network dollars helped facilitate the purchase of several items to enhance the music therapy department at Marillac, such as purchasing guitars for a guitar lab, several ukuleles, drums, and noise-reducing headphones. Music therapy works best with patients get to select their instrument of choice, and there was an overwhelming number of patients who continued to request guitars. With the help of CMN dollars, this dream became a reality, and now children are welcomed into the music therapy room with a beautiful wall of usable guitars!