Music Therapists and their Experiences with Client Death: A Phenomenological Study Through the Lens of Rando’s Mourning Theory

The death of a client can be unexpected, complex, and trigger professional grief. Music therapists encounter professional grief in many settings. Despite the plethora of literature on how music therapy helps clients address grief, mourning, and death, knowledge on how music therapists address their own professional grief is significantly scarce. Thus, the purpose of this phenomenological study is to understand how music therapists experience professional grief and how those experiences relate to the six R’s of Rando’s theory of mourning. The six R’s consist of recognition, reaction, recollection and re-experience, relinquishment, readjustment, and reinvestment. By analyzing the professional grief experiences of three music therapists, this phenomenological study explores how Rando’s mourning model applies to professional grief in music therapy and highlights themes of unpreparedness, unique support systems, and the role of music in professional grief.