Resounding attachment: Cancer inpatients' song lyrics for their children in music therapy

Abstract

Goals of work: Scant attention focuses on supporting parent-child communication during the parents' cancer hospitalizations. Parents may struggle to remain emotionally available. Caregiver absences may threaten secure attachment relationships with infants and elicit problems amongst older children. Music therapists help many parents with cancer to compose songs for their children. Their lyric analysis may provide insight into song writing's communicative and therapeutic potential. Materials and methods: Two song lyric groups were comparatively analyzed (based on grounded theory). One group included 19 songs written by 12 patients with the first author. Another included 16 songs written by 15..