Search

Treatments for students with problematic levels of music performance anxiety (MPA) commonly rely on approaches in which students are referred to psychotherapists or other clinical professionals for individual care that falls outside of their music training experience. However, a more transdisciplinary approach in which MPA treatment is effectively integrated into students' training in music/performing arts colleges by teachers who work in consultation with clinical psychologists may prove more beneficial, given the resistance students often experience toward psychotherapy. Training singing teachers, and perhaps music teachers at large, to use an evidence-based coaching strategy like Acceptance and Commitment Coaching (ACC) to directly manage students' MPA is one such approach. Building on the work of a previous study in which ACC was administered by a singing teacher to a musical theatre student with problematic MPA, we piloted the effectiveness of a six-session, group ACC course for a sample of performing arts students (N = 6) with MPA related to vocal performances, using a mixed-methods design. The coach here was also a singing teacher without a clinical background, and her training in ACC by a clinical psychologist was of a similar duration (8 h) as the previous teacher's (7 h). Similar to the musical theatre student, the students reported being significantly less fused with their MPA-related cognitions, more accepting of their MPA-related physiological symptoms, and more psychologically flexible while performing in general, and these improvements were maintained after 3 months. Furthermore, they appeared to lower their shame over having MPA and change how they thought in relation to one another. Of note, these improvements were similar to those shown by seven vocal students with MPA after they received Acceptance and Commitment Therapy from a clinical psychologist, but with larger reductions in shame and better acceptance of MPA, which suggests a non-clinical, group ACC intervention that includes supportive discussions to normalize MPA and challenges attempts to control it may be more helpful than individual psychotherapy. These results are promising and indicate a brief training in ACC (<10 h) may be sufficient for singing teachers to provide significant benefit for students with problematic MPA. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Thus far, treatments for music performance anxiety (MPA) have focused primarily on interventions administered by psychologists and mental health clinicians with training and education in psychotherapy. While these interventions are promising or even efficacious, many musicians prefer not to work with a psychotherapist due to stigma and lack of time/access. Student musicians are particularly vulnerable to developing MPA, and while they may prefer consulting with their teachers about MPA over psychotherapists, many teachers feel unqualified to help. Here, we investigated an alternative intervention model, in which a clinical psychologist with MPA expertise trained a singing teacher with no training or education in psychotherapy to use an evidence-based coaching model, Acceptance and Commitment Coaching (ACC), with a student vocalist with problematic MPA, in a single-subject design format. ACC is a version of Acceptance and Commitment Therapy (ACT) that has been used under various names with non-clinical populations to help enhance psychological flexibility, e.g., with athletes, at the workplace, with undergraduates, and others. The teacher received approximately seven hours of ACC training via Skype. In turn, she provided six one-hour ACC sessions to a university student vocalist. Materials for the training and coaching sessions were taken from an ACC book and an ACT-based self-help book for musicians, and the teacher also adhered to a GROW model of coaching. The student made clinically significant improvements in two ACT-based processes believed to correlate with improved psychological flexibility in previous ACT for MPA psychotherapy research, i.e., acceptance of MPA-related discomfort and defusion from MPA-related thoughts. The student also reported a significant shift had occurred in his thinking: he became more willing to have his MPA, and so he volunteered to sing in classes early in the upcoming semester, and he auditioned for & won a lead role in a musical, both of which he previously avoided doing. ACC appears to be a promising MPA intervention that can be administered by a music teacher without training or education in psychotherapy, and it may help schools who do not employ psychologists and are therefore unable to follow best practice guidelines for treating MPA. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]