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Beatrice J Krauss, PhD Casa de la Luz Hospice at the Hacienda , Tucson, AZ 85718, USA City University of New York Graduate School of Public Health and Health Policy , New York, NY 10027, USA Corresponding author: Beatrice J. Krauss, PhD, USA (beakrauss@gmail.com). Search for other works by this author on: Oxford Academic
https://orcid.org/0000-0002-6411-802X Military Medicine, usae216, https://doi.org/10.1093/milmed/usae216
Published:
24 May 2024
Article history
Received:
05 February 2024
Revision received:
03 April 2024
Editorial decision:
05 April 2024
Accepted:
11 April 2024
Corrected and typeset:
24 May 2024
Published:
24 May 2024
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Beatrice J Krauss, To Calm and to Commend: Veterans’ Musical Preferences Anticipating End of Life, Military Medicine, 2024;, usae216, https://doi.org/10.1093/milmed/usae216
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ABSTRACT
Introduction
Since World War 1, physicians have noted the calming effects of music for military personnel experiencing “shell shock,” Post Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD), or stress. Researchers have documented that stress or PTSD-like symptoms re-emerge for veterans at the end of life, triggered by hospital-like settings, co-occurring conditions, and debilitation. Dying veterans also face integration of their service and combat experiences into summations of their lives. In response, there has been a national movement for bedside ceremonies, often with music, to honor veterans.
Materials and Methods
The project elicited veterans’ musical preferences for calming and for music for honor services, using non-hospitalized veterans as surrogates for veterans in hospice. Respondent-driven sampling protected confidentiality and likely resulted in participants being representative of US veterans in terms of ethnicity, gender, and military branch. Recruitment materials contained all elements of informed consent, with consent collected in the introduction to the online survey. The survey had embedded links to musical performances, as well as write-in musical choices, and allowed US veterans from the Army, Air Force, Marines, and Navy to note their preferences both for music that was calming and music to be used in honor ceremonies. Online queries also asked about stress during service, usual coping strategies for stress, and current or past symptoms of PTSD. Links to hot lines were provided. The study was approved by the University of Arizona Institutional Review Board.
Results
Listening to music was the most prevalent of the 20 coping mechanisms for stress in this sample of 30 veterans. Musical preferences were stable across age groups. For calming, music at resting heartbeat rhythms was chosen. Music from early adulthood or from the timelessness of the classics was selected most often. Modern music with lyrics has themes of duty, affirmation, gratitude, and relief. The nearly universal soothing effects of lullabies were recognized. For music for honor ceremonies, desires were often independent of the military branch. Patriotic songs, or songs recognizing multiple service branches, or with themes of peace and affirmation were more often chosen than music from a particular service branch.
Conclusion
Listening to music is a frequent coping strategy for veterans. While themes representing classical music choices are readily available in anthologies, other music chosen by this sample is not; the veterans’ preferred music is rarely found in compilations of popular, movie, and TV music. Hospice and hospital intakes that document and communicate veterans’ musical preferences to music therapists and therapeutic musicians may better support service men and women. Further research may examine veterans’ preference for live or recorded music at end of life given the importance of meaning-making and the presence of others documented in the literature.
© The Association of Military Surgeons of the United States 2024. All rights reserved. For commercial re-use, please contact reprints@oup.com for reprints and translation rights for reprints. All other permissions can be obtained through our RightsLink service via the Permissions link on the article page on our site–for further information please contact journals.permissions@oup.com.
This article is published and distributed under the terms of the Oxford University Press, Standard Journals Publication Model (https://academic.oup.com/pages/standard-publication-reuse-rights)
Topic:
- hospice
- music
- post-traumatic stress disorder
- terminally ill
- veterans
- stress
- coping behavior
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