Art and music therapy for kidney patients

Coping with kidney disease and dialysis can be difficult. Sometimes you have to think outside the box! Have you considered music or art therapy? Today Social Worker Melissa Fry and patient Steve Light are here to share their experiences with using music and art as coping strategies.

In this episode we spoke with, 

Melissa Fry, MSW, CAPSW is a dialysis social worker at Mile Bluff Medical Center. She has worked in the dialysis unit for the past 25 years. She has focused on assisting her patients with anxiety, depression and other mental health issues. She has used music as one technique to assist her patients with coping with various life stressors.

Steven Light is an artist from Swindon UK. He used his art as a way to express himself though a second wave of kidney failure, and created an exhibition around this experience called ‘Fistula’. His brother lovingly donated a kidney to him in July 2022 and both have fully recovered.

 

Additional Resources 

Effect of music therapy on dialysis patients

 

Do you have comments, questions, or suggestions? Email us at NKFpodcast@kidney.org. Also, make sure to rate and review us wherever you listen to podcasts.