Individuals Experiencing Mild or Moderate Mental Health Issues Clinical Trial
Official title:
Creative Practice as Mutual Recovery: Connecting Communities for Mental Health and Wellbeing
This study explores the hypothesis that mental health service users, their carers and
musicians can - through the creative act of music learning and performing - mutually enhance
wellbeing through the development of more meaningful and resilient lives. The project seeks
to explore three interconnected issues: (i) the extent to which music learning and
performing provides a forum for 'mutual recovery' among adult mental health service users,
their formal/informal carers, and musicians, (ii) the characteristic features of 'mutual
recovery' through music, and (iii) the underlying mechanisms of such 'mutual recovery'.
The study will consist of three different stages. Stages 1 and 2 will examine the effect of
a variety of group activities - including participatory music, listening to live music,
listening to recorded music and a non-music control - on psychological scales, saliva
samples of stress hormones and cytokines, and subjective experience to see which provide the
most relaxing, sociable and supportive environments for mutual recovery. Stage 3 will
explore the impact of musical interventions over longer periods of time.
A systematic review we have just carried out has revealed a major gap in research comparing
different music interventions and testing the effects of different lengths of interventions.
As a result, our study should help us answer the following questions:
- Which aspect(s) of music can contribute to mutual recovery?
- Do carers, patients and musicians all respond to the same activities, or do some
musical activities suit certain groups more than others?
- Do carers, patients and musicians all recover at the same rate?
- What length of intervention is most effective?
If certain interventions are found to produce stronger results than others, these results
could help guide community groups and healthcare settings in their design of music
activities and have implications for the spending of arts-in-health budgets.
n/a
Allocation: Randomized, Intervention Model: Crossover Assignment, Masking: Open Label, Primary Purpose: Supportive Care