Transitioning to teletherapy during COVID-19

When COVID-19 brought a sudden and dramatic hiatus to ordinary work life in March 2020, we did not think for a moment we’d still be experiencing the lingering effects of this pandemic more than two years later. In fact, when this special online volume was imagined, it was primarily about capturing a moment in time, one that we were living through in real time together. As we know from our experiences of making music with people in music therapy, capturing something in real time is both beautiful and challenging. How we see COVID in our work is quite different now than even one year ago and will continue to change as we move into the next phase of this pandemic and beyond. At the time of writing this editorial, more than 900,000 COVID-related deaths have been reported in the United States, 138,000 in the United Kingdom, and 1.7 million in Europe. The omicron variant is widespread, with very high infection rates throughout the world. Rates of infection and government responses, including lockdowns and travel restrictions, continue to impact everyday life, including the lives of clinicians and educators, students and, most of all, those trying to receive healthcare. The articles presented in this special volume help us to consider what we were living through during this time, and to reflect upon clinical and educational practices now and into the future. The sudden move to teletherapy, and the stress and isolation experienced by clients, their families and therapists, has left an indelible mark on our profession. While it appears that our work as clinicians, educators and researchers is irreversibly changed, we are still living through these impacts, and it may be a number of years before we are fully able to understand them. The beauty of the articles included in this special volume is the different ways these authors ask us to consider this time period, and in so doing, reconsider or reimagine our work. “Relationship” is a central theme in this issue: the authors ask us to reimagine the relationships we have with our clients, reconsider the ways clients access and engage in therapy, reflect on the ways music therapy managers encountered the challenges of providing services for patients, and reframe the ways educators adapted their work with students. Sharing the same learning experiences together – whether as client/therapist, as student/educator, or peer-to-peer – is also a recurring theme. The articles speak to the humanity of our work, the moral dilemmas of care during early COVID, and the creative ways these authors responded to the stress, uncertainty and fear of the time periods in which they are writing (predominantly May to August 2020). In “Shaping the digital space” (p. 203) Kerry Devlin invites us to reconsider what our relationships with therapy participants mean when not experienced in a physical space together. The vividness of Devlin’s writing brings the therapy room alive and guides us through the challenges of moving online. In her work with Dexter, a neurodivergent child, Devlin describes it this way: “Could the complexities of our work be realized online? I was afraid our first virtual session would end in disaster, NORDIC JOURNAL OF MUSIC THERAPY 2022, VOL. 31, NO. 3, 199–202 https://doi.org/10.1080/08098131.2022.2054534