The framing of music therapy in research articles involving dementia

Abstract

The present article involves a qualitative investigation of the framing of music therapy in research publications associated with dementia. The aim of this investigation is to establish how music therapy in dementia is framed in scientific texts published by the peer-reviewed journal Alzheimer’s and Dementia within the period of time from 2015 until the end of 2016. The corpus of the study consists of 15 scientific articles published in Alzheimer’s and Dementia. The results of the framing analysis indicate that music therapy in Alzheimer’s and Dementia is construed by several frames, such as ‘Nonpharmacological Intervention’, ‘Caregiver’, ‘Apathy’, ‘Agitation’, ‘Behavioural Symptoms’, and ‘Memory and Cognitive Function’. These findings are further discussed in the article.

Keywords

• Alzheimer’s, dementia, framing, music therapy