Partnership with King’s College London and Breathe Arts Health Research
With a multidisciplinary team of researchers, artists, scientists and clinicians, SHAPER is an ambitious, large-scale clinical trial and implementation science study, in which we are testing and scaling three arts projects within NHS settings.
SHAPER moves beyond just assessing impact of the arts on health and looks at how programmes with proven impact at a local level in the short term can become national programmes commissioned by the health sector long term. Working with three arts organisations to first embed projects into NHS hospitals, clinics and in the community, the research team will then assess whether and how they might improve the health and wellbeing of greater numbers of patients.
Here at UCL we are leading the qualitative evaluation of the Breathe Arts Health Research’s ‘Melodies for Mums’ programme. This programme brings together new mothers – referred by GPs, midwives, and other health professionals – in singing and music sessions with their babies, aiming to reduce symptoms of postnatal depression (PND). This builds on the previous Music and Motherhood study, which demonstrated the effectiveness of the sessions in reducing symptoms of PND faster than usual care or social groups.
Note: the COVID-19 pandemic meant that the Melodies for Mums programme was delivered online for a period. Since this method of delivery was new, and not yet tested, we have conducted an initial evaluation of its effectiveness. We found that Melodies for Mums online was feasible to mothers who partook in the programme and supports the mental health and well-being of new mothers experiencing PND, especially when barriers to in-person treatment are present. You can read more about its online feasibility in our paper here. The main trial (using in-person delivery) resumed in Autumn 2021.
Find out more about Melodies for Mums and SHAPER, as well as our work supporting and evaluating the European roll-out of singing sessions for postpartum depression.