The Limits of Resilience and the Need for Resistance: Articulating the Role of Music Therapy With Young People Within a Shifting Trauma Paradigm

Abstract

A broad sociocultural perspective defines trauma as the result of an event, a series of events, or a set of circumstances that is experienced as physically or emotionally harmful or life threatening, with lasting impacts on an individual’s physical, social, emotional, or spiritual wellbeing. Contexts and practices that aim to be “trauma-informed” strive to attend to the complex impacts of trauma, integrating knowledge into policies and practices, and providing a sanctuary from harm. However, there is a body of critical and decolonial scholarship that challenges the ways in which “trauma-informed” practice prioritizes individualized interventions, reinscribes colonial power relations through its conceptualizations of safety, and obscures the role of systemic injustices. Within music therapy trauma scholarship, research has thus far pointed to the affordances of music in ameliorating symptoms of trauma, bypassing unavailable cognitive processes, and working from a strengths-based orientation. In critiquing the tendency of the dominant trauma paradigm to assign vulnerability and reinforce the individual’s responsibility to develop resilience through adversity, this conceptual analysis outlines potential alternatives within music therapy. Drawing on a case example from a research project with young people in school, I elucidate the ways in which music therapy can respond to power relations as they occur within and beyond “trauma-informed” spaces. I highlight two overarching potentials for music therapy within a shifting trauma paradigm: (1) as a site in which to reframe perceived risk by fostering young people’s resistance and building their political agency and (2) in challenging the assumption of “safe spaces” and instead moving toward practices of “structuring safety.”

A Systematic Review of Music-Based Interventions to Improve Treatment Engagement and Mental Health Outcomes for Adolescents and Young Adults

“…Results from this review have several practice implications that can contribute to reimagining new ways of thinking about how social workers can leverage the potential of music and expressive strategies to support A-YA, particularly among those who are marginalized and experience excessive levels of stress. First, while there have been promising advances in trauma-informed interventions that embed creative, dynamic, and multisensory tools (e.g., strengths-based, mindfulness) (e.g., Bendall et al, 2021 ; McFerran et al, 2020 ; Scrine, 2021 ), our mental health system remains oriented predominantly around treatment paradigms that center on “top-down” (e.g., talk-based strategies focused on changing how we think ) approaches which rely on cognitively mediated strategies (Malchiodi, 2020 ; Perry, 2009 ; Perry & Winfrey, 2021 ; van der Kolk, 2015 ). We describe how music-based interventions can be implemented as a primary or complementary approach, embracing the successes of but reaching beyond the limits of “traditional” strategies, alongside a review of the evidence that suggests these interventions can lead to improvements in engagement and mental health.…”

The medicine in the circle: A case example of embodied arts-based community practice to address intergenerational trauma in rural South Africa

“…In social contexts where physical and emotional safety cannot always be guaranteed, the creation of a safe space is understood in terms of creating a sense of safety for the participants. Scrine (2021) suggests that this co-creation of a safe enough space lends itself towards a trauma-informed approach that is sensitive to the system in which it operates. Practice elements of co-creating a safe environment includes ensuring that all participants are informed of what the programme is about and that they attend by choice.…”

Trauma mitigation for the workforce: A conceptual framework applied in COVID-19 pandemic conditions

“…Accordingly, we take seriously the critiques of workplace training that explicitly or implicitly puts the burden of self-care and selfprotection on the very individuals who are operating in harm's way. 29,30 Stress management sessions and resiliency training sometimes imply that workforces can instantly experience well-being if only they would take responsibility for doing simple techniques. Victim blaming is an extreme implication: if people are not coping well, then maybe they are not applying their training or trying hard enough.…”