At Montreal Symphony, Doctors Can Prescribe Concerts for Patients

In Thursday’s (10/30) CBC.com (Canada), Sheena Goodyear reports, “Doctors in Montreal are prescribing music as medicine. The Montreal Symphony Orchestra has teamed up with a national physicians’ organization to develop a new program that allows doctors to prescribe their patients free tickets to shows. ‘Physicians will get prescriptions that they will give to patients. The patients will call us. And we will give each patient that calls us two tickets for free,’ Mélanie La Couture, CEO of the Montreal Symphony Orchestra, [said]. ‘They can select the concert they want.’ It’s the latest example in Canada of what’s known as social prescribing, in which health-care providers prescribe things that are normally outside the scope of medicine, but can have tremendous impact on people’s health and well-being—like art, nature or community activities. It’s a growing practice, and one advocates say reduces loneliness, improves health outcomes, eases the burden on the health-care system and builds much-needed trust between doctors and patients…. Nicole Parent, executive director of Médecins francophones du Canada, first reached out to La Couture, said, ‘There is an abundance of data, evidence-based data, that have shown that music influences the body and mind in remarkable ways.’… Loads of doctors have already expressed interest, as have other orchestras in Toronto and Quebec City.”