WMU News

College of Health and Human Services
Western Michigan University
Kalamazoo MI 49008-5243 USA
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Healing through harmony

Contact: Jillian Fraze
June 26, 2025

This summer, the Aphasia Communication Enhancement (ACE) Clinic and Music Therapy at Western Michigan University are collaborating in the ACE clinic to deliver an innovative, integrative approach that blends language therapy with music-based interventions. 

Music therapy student with a male client playing the harmonica as speech therapy students observe.

Allison Mezo, the clinical coordinator for ACE, established this partnership in the spring semester. This experience offers graduate students invaluable interprofessional experience, as they learn to coordinate goals, share expertise and design holistic care together. For individuals with aphasia, integrating music and language therapy enriches engagement and leverages preserved musical pathways to support speech recovery and build communication confidence. The ACE program sincerely thanks the Music Therapy Program for their collaboration and the opportunity to co-create sessions that harness melodic intonation techniques, rhythm exercises and structured language tasks.

Music therapy student Lucy Erbes commented, "to treat my clients with Aphasia, I based my interventions off of Neurologic Music Therapy techniques such as Musical Speech Stimulation, Melodic Intonation Therapy, Therapedic Singing and Rhythmic Speech Cueing. The two main goals I focused on were improving the client’s speech fluidity and shortening the time taken for a client to recall a word. I was able to use piano and guitar, as well as handheld percussion gear such as a tambourine, cabasa, maracas and rainstick. I mostly used the handheld percussion gear with my group, but found that using the tambourine in individual sessions was helpful to tap out sentences." 

Lucy continued, "I really enjoyed working with students who were not in my field, as it taught me new ways to professionally communicate and engage in a healthy learning environment for both the client and clinician."
 
Speech-language pathology student, Lauren Gutierrez said, "The music therapy student I worked with, Lucy, made every session so fun for myself and the client. We worked together to implement aspects of speech therapy, such as improved word-finding and increasing sentence length with Musical Stimulation Therapy and song-writing activities. My client and her mother were blown away by the progress she made in just eight short weeks of speech with music therapy. I had such an amazing time working with Lucy and the music therapy department in general, and I can definitely see myself collaborating with music again in my future career!"