Music trialled as an intervention in the regulation of emotional states

A University of Queensland clinical psychologist is developing a music program to engage with and educate young people about their emotions and how to tolerate and regulate strong emotional states.

Dr Genevieve Dingle, a former manager of a hospital drug and alcohol program, had found it difficult to engage younger substance-users in group therapy and noticed the young people would instead be playing with their phones and listening to music on their MP3s. So she decided to try music as a way to engage them in the group discussion. She trialled an afternoon of music therapy once a week and found the young people responded well to sharing their music, performing rap, drumming and other musical activities.

While young people aged 15 to 25 experience intense emotional highs and lows, their capacity for emotion regulation is not fully developed until adulthood. Dr Dingle said that cognitive behavior therapy has been criticised ‘for not addressing emotional regulation skills enough’. The intervention she has developed, called Tuned In, ‘uses a two-dimensional model of emotion and three types of emotion enhancing activities during music listening as a way of exploring and managing emotions’.

When the program was trialled with 60 university students, participants improved their emotional clarity and strategies for managing emotions and rated the program as highly effective and engaging. There was a 98 per cent attendance rate across the trial.

Contacts: Dr Genevieve Dingle, School of Psychology, [email removed]; Helen Burdon, Marketing and Communications, Faculty of Social and Behavioural Sciences, [email removed].

(Source: communityNet e-news, week ending 26 September 2012.)