‘Music’s unique ability to transform people’s lives – even for an instant – cannot be underestimated’

To celebrate National Social Prescribing Day on March 10th, we teamed up with Baroness Greengross, Crossbench Peer, to write about the importance of music for people living with dementia and their carers.

This piece was published in the Telegraph and is shared here with their kind permission.

Baroness Greengross writes in the Telegraph

Last month I proposed an amendment to the Health and Social Care Bill which was read in the House of Lords on the evening of Wednesday 9th February 2022. It was a positive and successful debate. The government said that when they release the National Dementia Strategy later this year it will include the promotion of social prescribing, and I’m very hopeful music will be a core part of this.

I’ll be monitoring this closely, as it’s a subject close to my heart. Many years ago, I went to a concert in one of London’s big concert halls.  During the performance, I was moved to tears by a gentleman who was conducting the orchestra beautifully. This man had been in a Westminster care home for 20 years living a withdrawn life; he was largely uncommunicative, but he did hum. By chance his humming was heard by someone connected to the Royal Academy of Music, who recognised the beauty in his gesture, so they arranged for a group of young professional musicians to orchestrate his humming. Eventually, on this evening in London, this elderly man was given the opportunity to conduct his own music and came right back to being himself. It was an experience I shall never forget and I feel honoured to have been in the audience.  It was so moving that I couldn’t hold back my tears.

That evening I watched the power of music in action. I will never forget this experience and it is what drove me to put forward the amendment to this bill.

Today there are 885,000 people living with dementia in the UK and the annual cost to the UK economy is £26bn. That’s more than cancer and chronic heart disease combined.  By 2040 it is expected that the number of people with dementia will almost double to 1.4 million, and the impact on the already stretched NHS and UK economy will be huge.  We need fresh thinking and innovation to manage a crisis like this.

Social prescribing, and specifically the prescribing of music, is not a silver bullet but it has been proved to have a dramatic impact on the health and wellbeing of people living with dementia.

For carers, too, music’s unique ability to transform people’s lives – even for an instant – cannot be underestimated. It can be like a short-term miracle to once again have your loved one right there in the present with you.

Music for Dementia is a national campaign calling for music to be made accessible to everyone with a diagnosis of dementia and for it to become an integral part of dementia care plans. I am a big advocate of the campaign and I will continue to support its work.

The fight for effective interventions for people living with dementia continues. More research is needed to better understand the link between music and dementia, and more needs to be done at a local level to raise awareness about the benefits that music can have, so social care professionals and home carers feel empowered to use music on a daily basis.

Next month Music for Dementia will be launching its Power of Music report alongside UK Music, and I hope it helps to influence policy and practice. The time for talking is over. Awareness now needs to turn to action.

This is a shortened version of the original article. See the full version here.