Music Therapy Songwriting for Veterans: Expression, Recovery, and Emotional Support

Article Overview

Songwriting in music therapy is increasingly being explored as a meaningful way to support emotional expression, identity work, and communication in military rehabilitation. In this 2019 retrospective qualitative analysis, researchers examined 14 songs written by 11 active-duty service members during music therapy treatment at the National Intrepid Center of Excellence at Walter Reed. Songs were created across 2–3 individual sessions facilitated by a board-certified music therapist and reflected the experiences of service members coping with PTSD, depression, anxiety, TBI, and difficult recovery and reintegration processes.

The analysis found that songwriting gave service members a way to express fears, hopes, emotional pain, and the challenges of homecoming and rehabilitation. The authors describe songwriting as a reflective medium through which participants could communicate thoughts and feelings, explore difficult internal experiences, and share parts of their story with family, peers, and providers. Rather than testing symptom reduction in a controlled trial, the study offers qualitative insight into how music therapy songwriting may support emotional expression, reflection, and psychotherapeutic processing in military populations.

Why This Matters

This article matters because it highlights a side of music therapy research that is deeply human and clinically meaningful, even when it is not measured through symptom scores alone. For service members recovering from trauma, TBI, depression, anxiety, and difficult re-entry experiences, songwriting may offer a way to express emotions, communicate struggles, and explore identity in a form that can feel less threatening than direct conversation. The paper also suggests that songwriting may help lower resistance to emotional exploration through musical structure and metaphor, while supporting communication and self-understanding.

It is also valuable because the study shows how songs can become a bridge between inner experience and interpersonal connection. The authors note that the songs enabled service members to share thoughts, emotions, fears, and hopes with family, friends, and providers, sometimes for the first time, and describe songwriting as an important stepping stone in psychotherapeutic processing. For a site library, this makes the article especially useful for themes like music therapy for veterans, PTSD support, songwriting in therapy, identity and recovery, and emotional expression through music.

Bradt, J., Norris, M., Shim, M., Gracely, E. J., & Gerrity, P. (2019). Vocal warriors: A retrospective qualitative analysis of songwriting in music therapy during military service members’ rehabilitation. The Arts in Psychotherapy, 62, 19–27.

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The Veteran in a New Field, Winslow Homer, 1865