Music and Parental Mental Wellbeing

There is compelling evidence that music can enhance parental wellbeing, yet to date there have been few attempts to bring together current endeavours in the field. Music and Parental Mental Wellbeing provides readers from music, health, and beyond, with a new and comprehensive opportunity to consider how music can support parental mental wellbeing. Drawing on recent ground-breaking practice, research, and evaluation the book illuminates how music can support mental wellbeing in pregnancy and the postnatal period, childbirth and perinatal hospital settings, and in the early years. Each chapter provides introductory context, describes the relevant musical practice, consider the intersections with parental wellbeing, and end with implications for practice and key take-aways for the reader. With an interdisciplinary and international team of authors, including music and health practitioners, experts by experience, and researchers, this book explores and establishes the role of music, in its many forms, in supporting and enhancing parental mental wellbeing.

Rosie Perkins is Professor of Music, Health, and Social Science at the Royal College of Music, London. Based in the Centre for Performance Science, Rosie's research investigates two broad areas within music and mental health: how music and the arts support societal wellbeing and how to enhance artists' wellbeing and career development. Rosie is an honorary Senior Research Fellow in the Faculty of Medicine at Imperial College London and, in 2019, was elected an Honorary Member of the Royal College of Music.

- 1: Rosie Perkins and Maddalena Miele: Music and parental mental wellbeing - 2: Katie Rose M. Sanfilippo, Lauren Stewart, and Vivette Glover: Music and prenatal stress, anxiety, and depression - 3: Charulatha Mani and Michelle O'Connor: Synchronised in song: Social connectedness among migrant and refugee mothers - 4: Lorna Greenwood, Yvonne Farquharson, Hannah Dye, Rosie Perkins, and Daisy Fancourt: Group singing and postnatal depression - 5: Neta Spiro, George Waddell, Rosie Adediran, Penny Osmond, Emily Tredget, Sunita Sharma, and Rosie Perkins: Online songwriting and postnatal loneliness - 6: Caitlin Shaughnessy, Andrew Hall, and Rosie Perkins: Online personalised music-making with patients in hospital during pregnancy - 7: Claire Flower, Sunita Sharma, and Louise Brown: Music While You Wait: Improvising music therapy practices in hospital maternity services - 8: Tríona McCaffrey, Pui-Sze Cheung, and Sylvia Murphy Tighe: Music listening to support the childbirth experience - 9: Mark Ettenberger, Friederike Haslbeck, and Alexandra Ullsten: Family-centred music therapy in the Neonatal Intensive Care Unit (NICU): Promoting self-efficacy, empowerment, and mental wellbeing in parents - 10: Jessica Pitt and Sophie Fox: Music for parent and child interaction - 11: Dennie Palmer Wolf, Kate Anderson, and Tiffany Ortiz: Music and mutuality: The Lullaby Project - 12: Tânia Lisboa, Diana Santiago, Vera Fonte, Caitlin Shaughnessy, and Rosie Perkins: Group music-making with families affected by Zika virus in - 13: Charlotte Boulton, Ben Lee, and Sarah Mears: Library rhyme times and mothers' mental health - 14: Rosie Perkins: A note on the future of music and parental mental wellbeing