Music Therapy for Psychological Trauma: Emotion Regulation, Social Connection, and Recovery

Article Overview

This 2025 theoretical integrative review explores how music therapy may support people recovering from psychological trauma, including post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD). The authors describe music therapy as a clinical, evidence-based practice that has been used across mental health settings to support emotion processing, affect regulation, and functioning, while also reviewing the growing trauma-focused literature in the field.

The review identified 19 empirical studies published since 2017 and found important advances in trauma-focused music therapy research, including increased use of randomized controlled trials, physiological measures, more detailed intervention descriptions, and the emergence of manualized treatments. The paper highlights recurring themes such as emotion regulation, social affiliation, nonverbal expression, agency, and therapeutic safety as possible mechanisms through which music therapy may help trauma survivors.

Why This Matters

This article matters because it helps explain not only that music therapy may support trauma recovery, but also how it may work. The review discusses music therapy as a potentially useful trauma-informed approach because it can support emotional regulation, embodied processing, nonverbal expression, and social connection, all of which are especially relevant for people living with trauma-related distress.

For a public-facing music therapy library, this is a valuable article because it shows that the field is growing in both theory and evidence. It also positions music therapy as a promising complement to mainstream mental health care, while honestly acknowledging that the field still needs more comparative studies, streamlined interventions, and stronger replication.

Williams, J., & Sidis, A. E. (2025). Music therapy for psychological trauma: A theoretical integrative review. The Arts in Psychotherapy, 96, 102369. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.aip.2025.102369

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Landscape, Albert Pinkham Ryder, 1897–98 (?)