Music Therapy with Elderly ‘Lifer’ Prisoners:
Who Wants to Know?
 

Author:

Matthew Huckel

Abstract:
This paper presents a rarely explored area of clinical work: offering music therapy to elderly prisoners on life sentences who are cared for at a specialist prison medical unit. The unit is designed to meet the medical needs of elderly prisoners who are either terminally ill or those who are unable to be cared for in standard prison institutions. Weekly music therapy sessions were offered for 13 months and consisted of initial assessment group sessions, followed by regular individual sessions.

A key aim in the research was identifying the task of music therapy in the prison unit. Attempting also to digest and process institutional dynamics in the prison environment and their influence on the therapeutic process was paramount. Music therapy was used to assess:

• Prisoner capacities for emotional connection and interpersonal interaction

• Prisoner use of the therapeutic relationship and music

• Responses and behaviours of staff and prisoners outside the sessions to the presence of music therapy.

Clinical outcomes of the work were identified using audio recordings of sessions in the final 2 month period of the therapy, as well as written data from observations. The outcomes of music therapy focus on two areas:

• Firstly, globally at the impact of music therapy in the prison unit and its effects on staff and prisoners;

• Secondly, the outcomes of individual sessions are revealed looking at the effects of the therapeutic relationship and discussing attachment issues and loss.

Case examples and audio excerpts highlight individual prisoner responses to music therapy, its inevitable loss, and levels of personal investment in the therapeutic relationship.

The findings of this work have implications and questions for the use of music therapy as an emotional medium offered to elderly prisoners who find taking ‘risks’ in relating personally and emotionally extremely difficult, especially in an institutional environment not designed to adequately process emotional material. ‘Knowing’ or ‘not wanting to know’ about prisoners emotional engagement in music therapy was a strong dynamic in the unit involving prisoners, nursing, and prison staff. This paper aims to highlight this dynamic and how music therapy addressed power relations and issues to do with personal and emotional ‘risk’.

Keywords:

elderly- prisoners- therapy- attachment

Biography
Since qualifying in 2004 Matthew Huckel has worked as a music therapist in Norfolk, England with various client populations. He currently works in the areas of learning disabilities, child and family therapy, adult mental health, and forensic psychiatry both in private practice and employed work.