Introduction
According to the World Health Organization, the perinatal period begins at 22 completed weeks of pregnancy and lasts until seven completed days after birth. Music therapy has a long history of treating depression and effectively lowers stress and anxiety in patients with various conditions, such as cardiovascular disorders. Principles of emotional regulation appear to be quite important in music therapy in psychological preventative programs and psychiatric care.
A wide range of psychological elements are included in emotional regulation. Prenatal bonding is included in music-induced prenatal stress reduction. According to research conducted in the third trimester of pregnancy, music and relaxation techniques significantly reduced anxiety levels. A multidisciplinary and etiological perspective is required when examining perinatal stress, anxiety, and depression. One of the specialties that contribute to prenatal healthcare is music therapy, which has demonstrated benefits for reducing stress, anxiety, and depression.
What Is Perinatal Music Therapy?
Perinatal music therapy benefits women throughout pregnancy and the first few months following birth. It is a personalized approach in which the mother and the music therapist use music to forge a warm connection between mother and child and provide the groundwork for healthy growth. The therapist helps the mother and father prepare for motherhood during the sessions. Music therapy aids in the stabilization of pregnant women's physiological and psychological circumstances and improves the long-lasting impact of antenatal care practices.
How Does Music Therapy Aid in the Physical and Mental Preparation for Pregnancy?
Music therapy aids in the stabilization of pregnant women's physiological and psychological circumstances and improves the long-lasting impact of antenatal care practices.
Emotional and Cognitive Control:
Becoming pregnant is a significant life event. It may be happy or torture the mother's mind and heart. It might improve things or ruin hopes for the future. When expecting a baby, cognitive adjustment is frequently a touchy subject. Most diverse concerns women may have during the childbearing period are how pregnancy affects one's body image, whether the baby is going to be normal and in good health, how being pregnant impacts one's connection with the spouse or mate, whether one should keep working during or after pregnancy, and uncertainties about having enough money to cater to the new or expanding family.
Researchers support music therapeutic approaches that offer relaxation techniques and take emotion in a broader meaning to control mood swings. These methods are created to respect the mother's expectations and moods linked to pregnancy. In addition to focusing on emotional issues, music therapy improves positive views toward conception, childbirth, and parenthood. Various evidence-based techniques for mood regulation are available through music therapy, and they can be used in prenatal and postpartum care.
Physical Exercise:
It has become normal practice to use music to improve one's motivation for physical activity. Furthermore, researchers demonstrated that creating music using an exercise machine increases physiological arousal over time, making physical activity more appealing. These findings suggest ways to raise the perceived value of physical activities that promote good health. These effects in pregnant women may positively correlate with their higher physiological and psychological responses to music. This is significant for the way music affects mood regulation and could be used in conjunction with auditory stimulation to reduce maternal hypertension.
Music supports motivation and improves mental and physical programming for the rhythmical and cyclical processes that predominate at birth when it comes to repetitive workouts. Antenatal music-sports programs that have been carefully adjusted show promise, but more research is needed.
Pain Relief and Relaxation:
Lower back ache and muscle stiffness are typical pregnancy discomforts. One must also consider potential psychological stress factors, even though the woman's swift weight gain and particular abdominal muscle strain account for most of their causes.
Progressive muscle relaxation (PMR) therapy emerged as a suitable alternative treatment in these situations, potentially enhancing the physical and psychological effects of pregnancy. PMR with music may be a useful treatment for reducing pain and enhancing the standard of life in pregnant women experiencing discomfort in the lower back.
In the field of obstetrics and the midwife, calmness, muscular management, and pain alleviation are essential. It is now widely accepted that using music to relieve pain and anxiety is a suitable alternative or addition.
Social Integration:
Postpartum depression affects the entire family severely, is a serious public health concern, and is a complex disorder. To address the complexity of postpartum mental health and sickness, a Canadian study is trying to pinpoint the primary mechanisms and variables that influence whether postpartum depression exists. Several studies identified exclusion from society, infant conduct, and a lack of social interaction among migrant moms as the primary drivers of postnatal depression.
Numerous music educational and music therapeutic approaches have been developed to improve social inclusion, a sense of safety, reactivity and reciprocity, and vocal and nonverbal emotional expression. These methods might also be a sound foundation for prenatal and postnatal activities with the child that are artistic and creative.
How Does Music Therapy Improve Bonding and Self-Reliance?
Music is frequently touted as the ideal technique to improve mother-child relationships. The complicated nature of vaginal birth and pain is taken into consideration in a recent study. A study emphasizes that music therapy throughout labor reduced postpartum anxiety and pain raised feelings of fulfillment with childbirth, and decreased early postpartum depression rate. This is significant given that undesirable birth experiences have been demonstrated to have a detrimental effect on postpartum health for mothers. According to experts, music therapy can be a non-pharmacological alternative that is safe, simple, and fun for postpartum well-being. Additionally, mothers preparing for cesarean surgery can reduce their preoperative anxiety by listening to music.
Bonding and the mother's sense of self-efficacy are likely to be negatively impacted by pain and the feeling of powerlessness. Self-consciousness and a lack of self-efficacy can hurt the mother's quality of life and the infant's emotional stability. Self-efficacy is crucial to the mother-father-child triadic connection, which significantly impacts the well-being of the family members. Scientific studies on the impacts of prenatal music lessons on the mother's self-efficacy and the benefits of postnatal music lessons on the mother's academic self-confidence still need to be completed.
How Does Perinatal Music Therapy Impact Newborns?
Studies examining the impact of perinatal music application tend to be difficult to compare and occasionally inconsistent. For example, lullabies, musical instruments that mimic the fluid sounds of the womb, and auditory stimuli that are intended to remind the baby of heartbeat sounds that could be noticed in the womb all have very similar beneficial impacts on postpartum sleeping conduct, according to a randomly allocated clinical multisite trial of 272 premature infants. As opposed to this, other research emphasizes the value of the mother's voice and claims that babies prefer music over other auditory stimulation.
Conclusion
The behaviors of newborns are improved, and perinatal anxiety is decreased by listening to music. The results from various studies imply that music as a supportive intervention can improve favorable outcomes for expectant mothers, their fetuses, and their newborns when given during the perinatal period. Future interventional studies involving music, though, ought to think about and concentrate on a thorough evaluation of the impact of the type(s) of music used and its genre, the significance of listening to music throughout the perinatal period, and an assessment of its impact on perinatal health conditions as well as psychological well-being.
