Multiculturally Focused Medical Music Psychotherapy in Affirming Identity to Facilitate Optimal Coping During Hospitalization

<span class="paragraphSection"><div class="boxTitle">Abstract</div>New York City (NYC) is the home of over a hundred different ethnic groups and over 800 spoken languages, all of which contribute to the rich zeitgeist for which NYC is known. While such cultural diversity can seemingly narrow the disparity between cultural groups, it may actually widen the gap even in an area as fundamental as healthcare. Affirming cultural identity in individuals navigating hospitalization and illness-related threat through an individualized approach to care can ameliorate the effects of social and cultural disparity, while also optimizing coping. Multicultural medical music psychotherapy, informed by family-systems and self-affirmation theory, is rendered to hospitalized patients and their families across culture, age, gender, and diagnosis. Cardinal to the delivery of this informed approach is the therapist’s working knowledge of social and culturally based norms, and of multicultural music and traditional styles, including the use of modes, idioms, rhythm, instrumentation, and song to access patients’ culture and family lineage. This approach is illustrated across five case vignettes in which treatment was individualized to meet the unique needs of patients hailing from their respective Romani, Orthodox Jewish, Haitian/African American, Chinese, and Latino cultures. Attendance to the individualized care of hospitalized patients through the synthesis of self-affirmation theory and family systems within a medical music psychotherapy model ensures a depth of care that optimizes coping, while diminishing the various levels of threat to identity imposed during hospitalization.</span>

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