Music and violence: Working with youth to prevent violence

Abstract

The prevention of youth violence is one of the major challenges of our time. Based on important key concepts on youth violence from the report of the World Health Organization, opportunities are presented for music therapy with youth to prevent violence. As music in its various forms reaches a very large number of young people all around the world on an emotional level, it is important to note its special ability to promote aggressive emotions as well as to regulate these same emotions. Integrated with more mainstream approaches, music therapy can have preventive potential at different levels: in individual settings, group programmes, and community approaches. Different music therapy approaches for the challenges of violence prevention are presented and developmental tasks for the future are discussed.