The Role of Music in Health and Wellbeing Journeys by Moss, Hilary; Fitzpatrick, Katie; O'Shea, Patricia;

Short description:

This is a collection of stories exploring the transformative role of music in people's lives. Through diverse experiences, this book highlights music's capacity to foster connection, wellbeing, health, and personal growth, making it a valuable resource for health, music, and therapeutic communities.

Long description:

The Role of Music in Health and Wellbeing Journeys is a collection of stories exploring the transformative role of music in people's lives. Through diverse experiences, this book highlights music's capacity to foster connection, wellbeing, health, and personal growth, making it a valuable resource for health, music, and therapeutic communities.

Readers will discover compelling narratives that demonstrate the profound impact of music in health and wellbeing contexts, from chronic illness to mental health recovery, and end-of-life care. Alongside personal accounts, professional reflections offer thoughtful insights into how music can be a catalyst for hope and change. This book provides practical ideas for integrating music into care and therapeutic settings while considering the experiences of those on health journeys.

This book is essential reading for healthcare professionals, music therapists, educators, arts and health professionals, and anyone curious about music’s ability to contribute to health and wellbeing, as well as those interested in how music can connect us to ourselves and each other.

Involving voices across the span of several continents, this is a truly international publication. The writing bridges the areas of music therapy, community music and self-use of music by foregrounding diverse and complex participant experiences in a refreshing way. The book is divided in two: first the 'gentle curation' of lived experience, and second, diverse theoretical and practical reflections on the contents. This allows the book to be explored in a number of ways. Strongly recommended reading for all those interested in how music can restore wellness in the face of trauma, disability and disease.
Dr Catherine Warner, Senior Lecturer, Music Therapy, University of the West of England 

This moving book honours the voices of people using music to support health and wellbeing. Centralising lived experience and presenting diverse perspectives, it explores the role of music with respectful and authentic co-production and collaboration. A powerful reminder of the strength of music and music therapy.
Tessa Watson MA, PGCE, SFHEA, Associate Professor and Programme Leader MA Music Therapy, University of Roehampton

The Role of Music in Health and Wellbeing Journeys is a deeply humane and illuminating book. Drawing on powerful personal stories alongside thoughtful professional reflection, it demonstrates how music can sustain hope, identity, and connection in the face of illness, trauma, and adversity. The voices gathered here remind us that health is not only a matter of treatment, but also of meaning, creativity, and community. This rich and compassionate volume will resonate with clinicians, researchers, musicians, and anyone interested in the profound relationship between the arts and human wellbeing. It is a timely and inspiring contribution to the growing field of arts and health.

Professor Brendan Kelly, Professor of Psychiatry, Trinity College Dublin

Table of Contents:

Exposition: Elevating voices of experience in music and health

Part 1: Exposition: Stories and experiences

1. Behind the bars: A narrative exploration of the use of song writing in an Irish prison context

2. Finding harmony in the high tide: How music supported me through chronic pain and raising four children

3. Healing rhythms: The interplay of music, cultural identity, and psychosocial support in Black men's prostate cancer recovery

4. Breaking the trauma of silence: A dialogical narrative of the experience of an online music therapy project

5. You can do anything that you set your mind to: The self-reflexive journey of a queer music therapist and the creation of Expressive Music Journaling

6. Nomsa’s coming back to life, stronger than the pain: the role of music in one woman’s experience in a psychiatric hospital

7. I’d sooner have it not knowing: Co-creation in music therapy improvisation

8. Exploring change through co-research: A child-centred music therapy case study of grief

9. Daddy’s girl: The impact of music therapy on the trauma of a five-year-old schoolgirl

10. When words fade: How music connects people with dementia and their family caregivers

11. Salt in my blood: Song writing at the end of life

Part II  Development: Insights and Reflections 
12. Voices and values in music and health journeys: Embodiment, social constructionism, and deconstruction as a theoretical basis

13. Music making as the performance of relationships in a community context

14. Beyond the expert: Creative health, music, and artificial intelligence

15. With hope for epistemic justice in music therapy

16. Self-perception and identity for the Global Majority in music education spaces and the impact on health and wellbeing

17. A therapist’s reflection on implementing a comprehensive music-based care plan for people with dementia

Recapitulation: Learning and hope