About

Martin Howard is a registered clinical counsellor and accredited music therapist who works in private practice with adolescents and young adults. He has successfully assisted many clients with a wide range of personal, mental health and adjustment issues including anxiety, depression, attentional, oppositional, parent-child relational, learning, and social issues.

Martin began his career as a music therapist and worked for 14 years in the North and West Vancouver school districts. In this capacity, and guided by the question “what can we learn from music?” Martin provided music therapy – hands on, interactive musical experiences – to children and adolescents with a range of special needs, mental health and psycho-educational issues.

Following his interest in the psycho-therapeutic aspects of this work in schools, Martin returned to graduate school and completed a Masters degree in Counselling Psychology at Simon Fraser University in 2004. Before opening his current private practice he worked for 4 years together with a child psychiatrist for the Fraser Health Authority on a Child and Adolescent “Shared-Care Team”; a collaborative healthcare demonstration project which brought the practice of counselling and psychiatry into physician’s offices. Through this work Martin co-developed an educational module for primary care physicians and pediatricians and presented this at a series of workshops.

Martin was an instructor in the Music Therapy Department at Capilano University for over 20 years. In addition to teaching guitar to music therapy students, his course – Developmental Music Therapy – brought his extensive experience in working with children and teens together with his interest in developmental psychology theory.

Over the years Martin has lectured and conducted workshops at many conferences, locally and internationally. He completed a four-year term as an editor for the online journal Voices: A World Forum for Music Therapy, and has written a number of articles for Voices and for other journals in the field. He has also supervised many students and interns.

Martin continues to be an avid guitar player and enjoys playing regularly with his jazz trio. And although the heady days of playing in rock bands are behind him he keeps the dream alive by running a “School of Rock” program in a local school. Martin is a father of two. He loves road biking in the summer and skate skiing in the winter. He is also on an ongoing quest to make the perfect cappuccino.