• Journal of Music and Human Behavior
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• v.17 no.2
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• pp.1-28
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• 2020

This case study aimed to investigate changes in adolescents' awareness of the motivation behind their excessive internet gaming after group music psychotherapy. Five middle school students participated in six 60-minute group sessions over 4 weeks. The group music psychotherapy program was developed to help participants understand their implicit reasons for excessive internet gaming. Verbal responses were obtained from pre-program and post-program interviews and original lyrics created by participants during program were collected for analysis. Obtained data were analyzed in terms of emotional and cognitive aspects in relation to the participants' awareness of the motivation behind their excessive gaming. The results showed that song writing as creative musical process allowed participants to be aware of positive and negative influence of gaming on themselves and express their motivation to change their perception on gaming behavior. Also, the participants reported that the use of musical product for their daily lives could be an effective coping strategy to manage their gaming behaviors and an alternative for gaming. The findings from this study support that group music psychotherapy can be an effective approach to promote awareness of adolescents' motives for excessive internet gaming and to help adolescents better manage their gaming behaviors.