Frontiers in Psychology 01 frontiersin.org Treating the musician rather than the symptom: The holistic tools employed by current practices to attend to the non-motor problems of musicians with task-specifc focal dystonia Anna Détári * School of Arts and Creative Technologies University of York, York, United Kingdom Musicians Focal Dystonia (MFD) is a task-specifc movement disorder afecting highly skilled musicians. The pathophysiology is poorly understood, and the available treatments are unable to fully and reliably rehabilitate the afected skill. Recently, the exclusively neurological nature of the condition has been questioned, and additional psychological, behavioral, and psychosocial contributing factors were identifed. However, very little is known about how these factors infuence the recovery process, and how, if at all, they are addressed in ongoing practices. For this study, 14 practitioners with substantial experience in working with musicians with MFD were interviewed about the elements in their approach which are directed at the cognition, emotions, attitudes, and behaviors of their patients and clients. A wide variety of tools were reported in three areas: (1) creating a supportive learning environment and addressing anxiety and perfectionism, (2) using body-oriented methods to optimize the playing behaviors and (3) consciously channeling the focus of attention to guide the physical retraining exercises and establishing new habits. The study also revealed that in-depth knowledge of the instrumental technique is proftable to retrain the impaired motor patterns. Therefore, the importance of including music educators in developing new therapeutic approaches will also be highlighted. KEYWORDS Musician’s Focal Dystonia, treatment, holistic approach, ongoing practices, interview with practitioners Introduction According to the most recent estimates, 1–2% of accomplished musicians experience severe impairment in their fne motor skills when playing their instrument due to Musician’s Focal Dystonia (MFD) at some point in their careers (Altenmüller, 2003). Tis peculiar condition is classifed as a Focal Isolated Dystonia (FID; previously Primary Focal Dystonia; TYPE Original Research PUBLISHED 13 January 2023 DOI 10.3389/fpsyg.2022.1038775 OPEN ACCESS EDITED BY Graham Frederick Welch, University College London, United Kingdom REVIEWED BY Eckart Altenmüller, Hanover University of Music Drama and Media, Germany Stine Alpheis, Hanover University of Music, Drama and Media, Germany *CORRESPONDENCE Anna Détári ad1470@york.ac.uk SPECIALTY SECTION This article was submitted to Performance Science, a section of the journal Frontiers in Psychology RECEIVED 07 September 2022 ACCEPTED 23 December 2022 PUBLISHED 13 January 2023 CITATION Détári A (2023) Treating the musician rather than the symptom: The holistic tools employed by current practices to attend to the non-motor problems of musicians with task-specifc focal dystonia. Front. Psychol. 13:1038775. doi: 10.3389/fpsyg.2022.1038775 COPYRIGHT © 2023 Détári. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY). The use, distribution or reproduction in other forums is permitted, provided the original author(s) and the copyright owner(s) are credited and that the original publication in this journal is cited, in accordance with accepted academic practice. No use, distribution or reproduction is permitted which does not comply with these terms.