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.

1 - Music and parental mental wellbeing
2 - Music and prenatal stress, anxiety, and depression
3 - Synchronised in song: Social connectedness among migrant and refugee mothers
4 - Group singing and postnatal depression
5 - Online songwriting and postnatal loneliness
6 - Online personalised music-making with patients in hospital during pregnancy
7 - Music While You Wait: Improvising music therapy practices in hospital maternity services
8 - Music listening to support the childbirth experience
9 - Family-centred music therapy in the Neonatal Intensive Care Unit (NICU): Promoting self-efficacy, empowerment, and mental wellbeing in parents
10 - Music for parent and child interaction
11 - Music and mutuality: The Lullaby Project
12 - Group music-making with families affected by Zika virus in
13 - Library rhyme times and mothers' mental health
14 - A note on the future of music and 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.