Receptive music therapy to reduce stress and improve wellbeing in Italian clinical staff involved in COVID-19 pandemic: A preliminary study

Abstract

Highlights In an emergency situation it is possible to put in place a remote MT support intervention. Clinical Staff define this structured intervention as empathic, supportive and professional. MTps were able to create a remote therapeutic relationship with Clinical staff (CS). Self-administration of music by CS would not have been enough to achieve the objective of the present study. Few studies have been conducted so far with a focus on MT support to CS assisting COVID patients.

Mental health interventions and supports during COVID- 19 and other medical pandemics: A rapid systematic review of the evidence

“…All of the studies described the emotional stress that health professionals [ [19] , [20] , [21] , [22] , [23] , [24] , [25] , [26] , [27] , [28] ], non-specialists working in health care [ [29] , [30] , [31] ], patients [ [32] , [33] , [34] , [35] ], children [ 36 ], and members of the general public experience during a medical pandemic [ 37 , 38 , 39 ]. The first cases of a novel disease to emerge spark fear among health professionals and non-specialists working in health care because little or nothing is known about the disease or how it is transmitted [ 19 , [22] , [23] , [24] , 37 ].…”

“…For example, physicians and nursing staff with higher levels of mental health problems showed more urgent desires to seek help from psychotherapists and psychiatrists while those with subthreshold or mild disturbances preferred to obtain services from medial sources [ 23 ]. Physicians and nursing staff who work at newly created or designated pandemic treatment hospitals at the epicenter of a crisis tend to be the hardest hit emotionally and mentally [ 22 , 24 , 28 ]. Children are another high-risk group.…”

“…Two studies assessed mobile phone–delivered interventions—one for healthcare staff and one for patients. The first study examined the effectiveness of a music therapy intervention for staff working on a coronavirus unit in a hospital in Italy [ 28 ]. During the study, participants self-isolated in a hotel to minimize risk of infecting their families, and listened to playlists that focused on breathing, energy, and serenity.…”

“…Although this might also be true in middle- and high-resource countries, none of the studies from China, Canada, France, or Iran provided information on the mental health work force. The one study from Italy indicated that newly recruited clinicians at designated COVID-19 hospitals had inadequate psychological training [ 28 ]. Another study from Liberia described the challenges of using a train-the-trainer model for psychological first aid training as a capacity-building response [ 29 ].…”

“…Incomplete data sets and missing information were common. Future studies should consider ways to distinguish between pre-existing and new mental health symptoms [ 23 ], use larger sample sizes to verify results [ 23 , 28 , 34 ], and adopt study designs such as randomized prospective studies to better determine correlations and causation [ 23 , 27 ].…”