Description
Adolescents with developmental disabilities, neurological limitations, emotional issues, and behavioral issues are particularly stigmatized in today's society. Feeling pressured to fit into society's mold of "perfect" causes these individuals to further alienate themselves when what they really need is to experience a sense of community, which can only occur through communication. Various complementary and alternative medicine practices (CAMs) are being used with these populations to improve their quality of life and their well being. One CAM that is particularly successful with adolescents is music therapy (MT). This research was designed to investigate how communication within the context of MT encourages community construction for adolescents. Through ethnographic qualitative methods, I have found four patterns that lend to community construction: the communication of (1) connections, (2) togetherness, (3) autonomy, and (4) identity/expression. By using specific communication strategies, music therapists enable these four patterns to surface, and thus, encourage community construction both on a micro level, being the group within the music therapy session, and on a macro level, being the community at large. The micro community building motivates and encourages individuals to integrate into the larger community, ultimately affecting society as a whole.
