Many traumatized people experience music therapy as a supportive and helpful form of therapy. The world of music can give people healing experiences of security and, with their non-verbal means of expression, convey helpful forms of stress management and emotional regulation. This strengthens the ability to process traumatic stress and emotionally stressful memories. In addition, music therapy opens up scope of experience for dealing with trauma in a dosed manner, for overcoming trauma disorders, and for developing and expanding psychosocial skills.
At the same time, the findings of current trauma therapy research also point to the dangers of expressive treatment methods and call for innovative therapy concepts for professional handling of potential risks and for the trauma therapy-specific use of therapeutic methods.
In the present book "Music Therapy with Victims of Violence and Abuse", experts from different areas present their intensive examination of various aspects of research, theory and practice for the methodical development of music therapy approaches. Taking into account neurobiological findings and research results from developmental psychology, they developed theoretical models, intervention strategies and specific music therapy exposure options that highlight the potential of trauma-specific music therapy.
The case studies from music therapy treatments, from the contexts of psychosomatics and psychiatry, illustrate, among other things, the special features that must be considered when working with children compared to adults, or that arise with traumatized people with different cultural backgrounds. In further contributions, the connection between the diagnosis of borderline personality disorder, trauma and sexual abuse is discussed and the potential as well as the risk of the medium of music compared to other media are worked out. For the first time, a concept for the outpatient area is published, which should enable complex traumatized people to participate in group music therapy in addition to individual music therapy. In addition to the music therapy contributions, this volume also deals with the topic of digitization, which is becoming increasingly important for research into the development and treatment of trauma disorders through and with digital media. Another research field opens up for music therapy.
The book shows the current status of specific trauma-therapeutic music therapy and is aimed at music therapists, artistic therapists, psychotherapists, doctors and readers interested in the topic.