Date of Award

Spring 3-19-2018

Document Type

Thesis

Degree Name

MA - Master of Arts

Department

Expressive Therapies

Advisor

Donna C. Owens

Abstract

The growing field of music therapy aims to help those who suffer from an array of disorders, anxieties, and diagnoses using a wide collection of interventions and activities. Songwriting has been a useful tool for music therapists for many years. Popular interventions that utilize lyric replacement, fill-in-the-blank or Mad Lib style, and improvisational blues songwriting, have been very effective across a range of populations including children, adolescents, and the elderly. This project aims to bridge a gap in the research by implementing an original idea, which I devised, which encouraged clients to engage organically in a group setting. This intervention took place in a partial hospitalization program with adolescents ages 13-17. As the program is group-based, clients collaborated with their peers in the creation of a song. Groups were one hour in length, and the entire intervention took place during that time period. Over the course of this project, I found that these songwriting interventions elevated mood, facilitated emotions in a safe space, and promoted healthy group cohesion.

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Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 License
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 License.

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