What is the relevance of music, including pre-loss music therapy experiences, for bereaved informal caregivers of people who have died from advanced cancer?

Literature Review Outline

1) When working with adult grievers, music therapists have used compositional techniques, music in rituals, and improvisation to help the grievers process their experiences.  Wilkerson

2)  When working with adult grievers, music therapists have used compositional techniques, music in rituals, and improvisation to help the grievers process their experiences.  Wlodarczyk

3)RQ: What is the relevance of music, including pre-loss music therapy

experiences, for bereaved informal caregivers of people who have

died from advanced cancer?  Stories from participants offer insight into how music can improve mood, energies, inspire a new interest, and help one to fondly remember a deceased person or to endure harrowing visceral grief experiences and adjust, albeit painfully, to ones ongoing altered life. O’Callahan

4) This article describes the development of a music therapy-multidisciplinary intervention known as the ‘‘Remembrance Ceremony,’’ based on Running’s 4 elements of ritual. The intervention consisted of live reflective music, readings, a platform for expressing loss and emotion, and a ceremony to bless the healers’ hands. Programmatic evaluation provides preliminary evidence supporting the face validity and acceptability of the grief intervention. Popkin

5) Studies reveal that bereaved children and teenagers require familiar, enjoyable, and

age-relevant supports. This paper describes a home-based music therapy

. Roberts

6) Music is of equal importance with verbal processing as part of the overall therapeutic approach. Musical improvisation is also used as a primary tool to reflect back to, and affirm for, the patient the affective content of his or her life story. Bright

7)The purpose of the current project was to design and pilot a music therapy-driven grief processing assessment instrument with bereaved adolescents receiving group songwriting interventions. The focus of the present study was to ascertain if a seven-week songwriting group treatment protocol would assist the grieving process of adolescents who have experienced the death of a loved one as measured by the newly-developed Grief Process Scale. Dalton

8) This single subject case study demonstrates that Guided Imagery and Music can be an effective avenue for the expression and resolution of significantly painful material that is often unspeakable in day-to-day contexts . Kirkland

9) The authors propose that the nature of adolescent grief and loss demands a participatory orientation, regardless of the formal research methodology used. McFerran

10)The intrapsychic functions of music in the mourning process are explored, as is music as a unique response to trauma and as a special aesthetic expression of a range of affects connected with grief. Stein