Music Therapy: Music Sharing Intervention with Acute Adolescents

This thesis explores a music therapy song sharing group method with acute adolescents in community-based acute treatment and partial hospitalization. While there is research on music therapy and acute adolescents, there is a gap in the literature surrounding the topic of acute adolescents participating in music therapy group sessions. Research on music therapy and adolescents focuses on interventions for an outpatient setting and/or a variety of different interventions. There was limited research on inpatient music therapy with adolescents and more research on adult inpatients working with music therapy. The method presented here incorporates sharing personal songs that clients have a connection with, describing the connection through lyric analysis and/or sound descriptions, identifying when they listen to the song (as a coping skill), and opening conversations with the group about the song. Results indicated that adolescents enjoy sharing personal music, feel comfortable expressing themselves and discussing their history, and as a coping skill music reduces their symptoms. As a group, sharing the songs sparked a variety of conversations based on the different themes of each song, such as: loss, trauma, drugs, suicide, society’s labels, mental health, resilience, and so forth. From this method, the participants felt comfortable processing intense feelings and were able to join together as a community