None listed
Conditions
Brief summary
The proposed PhD study will involve the development and pilot testing of Tuning Relationships with Music (TRM), a new systemic intervention that aims to help parents with a history of childhood interpersonal trauma and their adolescent children (10-18 years) improve the quality of their relationship. Parents with a trauma history often struggle to connect to their children. Adolescent behaviour can trigger unresolved trauma memories for a parent, resulting in an escalation of conflictual parent-child interactions which may compromise a young person’s development, leading to problems with emotional and social functioning, and mental health difficulties. Therefore it is important to intervene early with families with these risk factors in order to prevent the emergence of problems and strengthen the parent-child relationship, which has been found to play an important protective role in supporting optimal developmental outcomes for young people. TRM aims to use music as a vehicle to work directly with nonverbal maladaptive patterns of communication, to teach parents and teens how to recognise, interrupt and repair negative cycles of interaction, to learn responsive ways of relating, and to help parents use emotion coaching strategies to identify and empathically respond to their teen’s nonverbal and verbal expressions of emotion.
Interventions
Tuning Relationships with Music is an intervention for parents with a history of childhood interpersonal trauma and their adolescent children, who are experiencing conflict in their relationship. Following clinical assessment, eight 1 hour sessions will be provided by a family therapist who has additional training in music therapy. Parents and adolescents will each attend 2 individual sessions and 4 joint sessions over a 4 month period. Both individual and conjoint sessions will comprise (1) psy
Tuning Relationships with Music is an intervention for parents with a history of childhood interpersonal trauma and their adolescent children, who are experiencing conflict in their relationship. Following clinical assessment, eight 1 hour sessions will be provided by a family therapist who has additional training in music therapy. Parents and adolescents will each attend 2 individual sessions and 4 joint sessions over a 4 month period. Both individual and conjoint sessions will comprise (1) psychoeducation about the effects of trauma on emotions and relationships, emotion coaching (parent only), adolescent social and emotional development, emotional intelligence, and principles of emotionally safe communication; (2) rhythms generated by parents and adolescents with the therapist on untuned drums will be used to help parents and adolescents focus on the non-verbal elements of their communication, and to learn how to identify, interrupt and repair negative cycles of interaction; (3) precomposed 'call and response' musical patterns on tuned pentatonic drums will be used to assist parents and adolescents to learn the nonverbal elements of emotionally safe communication - in particular reflective listening and contingent or empathic response. These music patterns will then be used to support teaching verbal 'safe talking' scripts and parent-adolescent generated verbal discussion of their issues. Treatment adherence will be monitored by using a fidelity checklist. An attendence register will also be kept.
Sponsors
University of Melbourne
Study design
Allocation
Randomised controlled trial
Intervention model
Parallel
Primary purpose
Educational / counselling / training
Masking
Open (masking not used)
Eligibility
Sex/Gender
All
Age
10 Years to No maximum
Healthy volunteers
Yes
Inclusion criteria
Parents who have a history of interpersonal childhood trauma as measured by the Childhood Trauma Questionnaire and the Betrayal Trauma Survey, and their adolescent children between 10 and 18 years, where they are experiencing conflict in their relationship as measured by the Conflict Behaviour Questionnaire.
Exclusion criteria
current perpetration of abuse, homelessness, diagnosed severe auditory problems, intellectual disability, acquired brain injury, autism spectrum disorder, psychosis.
Outcome results
None listed