Evelyn Mason

Indicative thesis title: Music therapy to address the needs of family caregivers of people with Huntington’s disease - a mixed methods study.

[email protected]

Background

Supervisory team: Dr Jonathan Pool (1st), Prof Helen Odell-Miller (2nd), Prof Wendy Magee (3rd)

Evelyn's research examines the needs of the family caregivers of people with Huntington's disease and how music therapy can address these needs.

The study is supported by the Independent Neurorehabilitation Providers Alliance (INPA) from which some members have pledged the provision of a music therapist and a neuropsychologist at the trial stage of the study.

Evelyn will be including the caregivers in both the needs assessment phase and the response to treatment phase, in order to ascertain how music therapy can address the caregivers' particular needs.

Evelyn is a Neurologic Music Therapy Fellow, and has specialisms in brain injury rehabilitation, adoption, dementia, learning disability, and hospice care. Evelyn plays the saxophone, flute and piano to a professional level.

Having completed her MA Music Therapy training at ARU in 2008, she worked for the Northern Ireland Music Therapy Trust in Belfast, at the FIVE Clinic in Chennai, India, for Methodist Homes Association (MHA) in central England, for Chroma Therapies with individual adoption cases, and currently works as a Neurologic Music Therapist at a brain injury rehabilitation unit in Bristol.

Evelyn has returned to ARU on a Vice Chancellor’s PhD Scholarship award to research the area of music therapy and the family caregivers of people with Huntington's disease.

Research interests

Evelyn's research interests are principally within the field of neuro-disability. They include:

• Developing musical techniques to address neurologically-induced sensations
• Examining music therapy techniques to address speech deficits in stroke patients diagnosed with aphasia
• Analysing connections between social issues and traumatic brain injury