Music Therapy and Guitar: Have we kept pace with the profession?

At the Southeastern Regional Music Therapy Conference, a group of music therapists presented at the conference including three of our own, Joe Bailey, Roy Joyner, and Harry Lester, who joined Dr. Roy Kennedy from the University of Georgia. Written below is summation of the presentation from Roy Joyner's words:

"This presentation was a culmination of work from professors, professionals, and internship supervisors. We have been on a quest in recent years in to find out if music therapy interns have the requisite skills on guitar that today’s music therapy profession demands. The bulk of this information was taken by a survey of students completing their course work up to the first half of their clinical internship.  With guitar more popular than ever in the field due to its portability, cost, and flexibility to accompany many kinds of music, these skills and the ability to use live music are what sets the music therapists apart from our contemporaries in the allied health fields. This poses us to ask many questions based on how we as professionals use the guitar in our practice. In training interns we have found that spending extra supervision time teaching guitar has become the expected norm. The questions we hoped to answer in the presentation included: 
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1. What skills do Music Therapy Interns feel would improve their guitar playing? 
2. Do Interns account for the use of the guitar when planning music therapy activities and treatment? 
3. Which formats do Music Therapy Interns believe would best help them reach their guitar goals?

 It is our hope that we can open the discussion that will bring a renewed emphasis on the importance of using the guitar as a tool in music therapy.  In addition, how we as professionals and intern supervisors can advise programs on how prepared students are when it comes to meeting the guitar needs of the profession. A copy of our survey can be found at this link." 

You can find a link to the presentation here.