Moshe Bensimon, Aviya Riabzev
Introduction The 2023 Israel-Hamas War created a prolonged collective trauma, with large-scale displacement and ongoing danger for Israeli civilians. In this context, “collective trauma” refers to disrupted communal continuity and shared meaning. This study explored how music therapists worked with displaced civilians during wartime displacement.Method Fifteen Israeli music therapists (aged 36–59) providing individual and group music therapy to civilians affected by the war participated in semi-structured interviews and follow-up member-checking. Data were analyzed using inductive thematic analysis, through which the A-CARE model was developed.Results Analysis identified five themes describing wartime music therapy. First, therapists treated the setting as portable and ethically adaptable, assembling spaces across homes, hotels, shelters, and evacuation centers. Second, they prioritized containment and stabilization through calming timbres, constrained harmony, breath-aligned singing, and embodied rhythms that helped ground clients in a safer, more tolerable present. Third, they restored agency through client choice, structured playfulness, micro-level control of intensity, and consent-sensitive pacing. Fourth, they fostered creative authorship through layered recording, arrangement, and revisitable musical artifacts. Fifth, they supported community functions through shared rituals, spiritually resonant repertoire, group singing as a holding environment, and musical activity in protected rooms during sirens.Discussion The five themes form the A-CARE (Adapt, Contain and stabilize, Activate agency, Relate, Express) model of adaptive wartime practice. The model links adaptation as the overarching platform with four connected components addressing regulation, agency, creativity, and communal restoration, and offers guidance to music therapists and allied professionals working with civilians during violence and displacement.