ABSTRACT
Music therapy is a profession that emerged in the post-World War II era in response to the identified needs of veterans who had been traumatised and injured by their experiences of war. A music therapy bereavement support group can be seen as a way of establishing a mourning ritual for young people in the context of contemporary school-based services. People who participate in music therapy frequently address issues of grief and loss associated with their other experiences of disability, mental and physical illness, or abuse. The age-old relationship between music and emotions makes this connection almost unavoidable. This chapter focuses on times when music is used to facilitate the grieving process in response to the death of a close friend or relative. It uses the example of adolescents to illustrate this process, since young people provide particularly good examples of how existing relationships with music can be appropriated for healthy mourning.
