Infants and toddlers in intensive care research

Infants and toddlers in intensive care: music therapy helps sick babies

According to research of Dr Stephen Malloch from University of Western Sydney infants and toddlers become less irritable and less likely to cry when someone sings to them gently.

Baby music also helps them maintain normal behavioural development.

The 3-year project was carried out in collaboration with the Royal Children's Hospital in Melbourne.

Its aim was to determine what impact baby music therapy had on infants and toddlers in intensive care.

Infants and toddlers: the findings

40 infants and toddlers were studied.
The researchers divided them into three groups:

babies hospitalised and receiving music therapy
babies hospitalised and not having music therapy
healthy babies, cared for at home, without music therapy

Behavioural development test was performed twice on each infant.

The hospitalised infants and toddlers, who received music therapy had up to 12 sessions of the therapist gently singing to them and touching them in a way that directly related to the therapist's perception of the social needs of the babies.

Those babies who did not have music therapy deteriorated in their irritability and crying behaviour. They were able to cope less with their hospitalisation as time went on.

According to Dr Malloch music therapy supported the infants' behaviour. Those infants maintained the same levels of irritability and crying that they had at admission.

The babies who received music therapy used up less energy when compared with the babies who did not receive the therapy.

This has implications for rate of healing and weight gain, two significant factors which contribute to the length of a hospital stay.

(These research findings were reported at the World Congress on Music Therapy held in Brisbane in 2005.)