Using Music Therapy-Based Songwriting to Support Bereaved Students
This chapter focuses on therapeutic songwriting approaches and techniques for supporting bereaved students. Music therapy-based songwriting offers grieving students a myriad of opportunities to validate, identify, normalize, and express thoughts and emotions, as well as to understand, feel, remember, integrate, and grow. An overview of the “VINE principle” (validation, identification, normalization, and expression of feelings and emotions) is provided as a useful way to support healthy grieving. The Grief Process Scale is an evidence-based measure of five grief process areas (understanding, feeling, remembering, integrating, and growing) and has been used in music therapy to document changes in core behaviors, thoughts and feelings regarding a child’s loved one, and how the child is coping since the death. Recommendations for those leading music interventions are included, as well as song resources and tips for non-music therapists.