Understanding Music Therapy in Young People’s Mental Health

The culture of youth mental health care has seen a worldwide shift away from a pathologised medical model, to a ‘recovery-approach’ emphasizing personal strengths and identity construction (Davidson, 2007; McGorry, 2007). This model spans care for mental health diagnoses as well as co-occurring developemental and neurodevelopmental conditions such as Austism Spectrum Disorder. While clinical care has cultivated such changes, research within youth mental health in Australia remains dominated by traditional post-positivist methods that are incongruent with principles of recovery-care. Music therapy practice is more congruent with contemporary health care principles, and offers young people recovering in mental illness opportunities to explore and develop their musical identity in the process of recovery (Ruud, 2010; McFerran, 2010).

The PhD project investigated the construct of musical identity in recovery and how music therapy services can best provide support. A participatory approach was chosen, to align with recovery values. However, a stark contrast to other projects within the Australian youth mental health context and required advocacy from its multidisciplinary team including the Head of Youth Mental Health, the Head of Music Therapy at the largest training course in Australia, as well as an international expert in musical identities, in order to be accepted.

The result of this dynamic combination of influences is a theory of musical identity in mental illness. The grounded theory describes how changes in musical identity are critical to many young people’s process to recovery and how the project necessitated the development of a community music ‘hub’ in order to facilitate young people’s access to appropriate resources in the community.

Music Identity and recovery with Music Therapy