Music and Motherhood

Background

The Music and Motherhood intervention was originally developed and evaluated in the UK by the Centre for Performance Science (a partnership between the Royal College of Music and Imperial College London) from 2015 to 2017. The intervention has since been adapted, delivered, and scaled up in the UK as the Breathe Melodies for Mums programme, by the non-profit Breathe Arts Health Research social enterprise, and included in the large-scale SHAPER-RCT on scaling up and embedding arts interventions into clinical pathways.

Postpartum depression (PPD) affects about one in seven women globally. There is a long history showing the benefits of singing for maternal mental health, and promising research has identified the clinical effectiveness of group singing and play. This study explored how Music and Motherhood was adapted to new cultural contexts, with a view to providing support and guidance on future implementation and scale-up of arts interventions.

Research Protocol

The Music and Motherhood implementation project explored the adaptation of the Music and Motherhood intervention to the new contexts of five cities in three countries: Silkeborg (Denmark); Turin, Este, and Rome (Italy); and Cluj-Napoca (Romania).

A research component was designed to explore the feasibility and evaluate the perceived impact of the intervention by participating mothers. Initial conversations with interested parties began in March 2021, and data were collected until summer 2023. Mothers in the participating  cities joined for ten weeks of singing classes, during which they answered questions on their PPD symptomatology, perceived social support, and mental wellbeing in weeks 0, 6, and ten. Mothers were also invited to discuss their experiences of the sessions in focus groups. In addition, selected mothers and those involved in implementing the project participated in interviews to evaluate the feasibility of adapting the group singing sessions to different cultural contexts.

Early qualitative findings have been published, including a study protocol of the 10-week singing intervention model and a research report outlining the key factors that influenced the adaptation and implementation of the singing programme. A toolkit outlining the adaptation and implementation of arts and health interventions in new contexts is forthcoming. 

Due to the sample size these results are not generalizable, but do indicate that the project broadly had a positive impact on participating mothers across the three countries. Further data on implementation, feasibility, and impact are forthcoming.

Provisional Data

Throughout the project three measures were used to determine the impact on participating mothers:

• The Edinburgh Postnatal Depression Score (EPDS), to measure symptoms associated with PPD
• The Multidimensional Scale of Perceived Social Support (MSPSS), to measure the perceived adequacy of social support from family, friends, and significant others
• The WHO-5 Well-Being Index, to measure the level of subjective wellbeing over the previous two weeks

Due to our sample size these results are not generalisable, but do indicate that the project did broadly have a positive impact on participating mothers across the three countries.

Further data on implementation, feasibility and impact is forthcoming, and will be uploaded on this page in due course.