Music therapy for women survivors of intimate partner violence: An intercultural experience from a feminist perspective

• Proposes the Plurimodal Approach in Music Therapy (APM) as an innovative treatment for abused women.
• Highlights socio-cultural differences in music therapy work among Cuban and Mexican women.
• Shows the extent to which the influence of patriarchal thinking, overrides socio-cultural differences, providing evidence based on songs used in the study.

This study arose from the growing number of women around the world subjected by their partner to domestic violence. These women suffer from issues of self-esteem, anxiety, identity crisis and high levels of depression, among other social and psychological symptoms. Some music therapists have demonstrated the effectiveness of music therapy techniques to improve the level of awareness of survivors, and to help with some of these symptoms. The author's aim is to share the results achieved after applying the multimodal approach to music therapy, to a sample of 17 women survivors of abuse: 7 Mexican and 10 Cuban, and to compare the cultural aspects involved.