Music and music therapy research for perinatal wellbeing on World Maternal Mental Health Day

On ‘World Maternal Mental Health Day’ on 1 May, Dr Tríona McCaffrey, Associate Professor of Music Therapy at the Irish World Academy featured as a panellist at the conference “From Research to Action: Improving Perinatal Mental Health for Women in Ireland”. This conference was co-hosted by the National Women’s Council and Trinity Centre for Maternity Care Research at the School of Nursing and Midwifery, Trinity College Dublin.

A part of a panel discussion on ‘Barriers & Enablers to the Specialist Perinatal Mental Health Model of Care in Ireland’ Tríona presented on a number of leading UL research projects on music and music therapy for perinatal wellbeing. Such projects included the ‘Mum’s Using Music’ (Mum) online project for perinatal wellbeing in pregnancy and PhD research by Pui Sze Cheung on music therapy as part of a specialist perinatal mental health service in Ireland. This interdisciplinary research is through on-going collaboration between the Irish World Academy, the Department of Nursing and Midwifery (UL) and the University Maternity Hospital Limerick.