Music Therapy Songwriting with At-Risk Parents in the Neonatal Intensive Care Unit (NICU)

Parents may experience mental health challenges when having a pre-term infant in the NICU, including stress, anxiety, or symptoms of depression. Family-centred music therapy seeks to actively integrate parents to the musical care of their infants and aims at fostering both infant and parental health and wellbeing.

One of the ways of musically engaging parents in the NICU is through songwriting, in which parents create an original song for their infant. This may include writing the lyrics, making decisions about the music, and working on a tangible project that aims at supporting parents in creatively expressing their ideas, thoughts, and emotions.

In this talk, we'll present and discuss an ongoing international multi-centre mixed-methods RCT, in relation to current clinical practice and previous research with parents in the NICU.

Part of the Cambridge Institute of Music Therapy (CIMTR) Public Lecture series.

About our speaker

Mark Ettenberger PhD, MA, MT is an Ethno-Music therapist trained in Austria; he obtained his PhD in Music Therapy from Anglia Ruskin University.

Mark specialised in neonatal music therapy (RBL – Rhythm, Breath, Lullaby) at the Louis Armstrong Center for Music & Medicine in New York and holds an MA in Peace Studies and Conflict Resolution from the UNESCO Chair of Philosophy for Peace, University Jaume I, Spain.

Currently living and working in Bogotá, Colombia, Mark is the director of SONO – Centro de Musicoterapia (www.sono.la) and a university lecturer at various music therapy programs internationally. He coordinates the music therapy services at several hospitals in Colombia and has a specific interest in researching music-based interventions and therapies in medical settings.