Music Therapy With Cancer Affected Children and Their Families

Summary

Background: Pediatric oncology patients and their families are in an existentially threatening situation for which music therapy has proven as a cross-linguistic field of action: the creative act of making music offers the possibility of strengthening individual competences and makes socio-psycho-biological conflicts tangible in a very direct way. Although music therapy is an established component of multimodal care and the inclusion of significant others in the therapy setting is recommended, there has been little clinical research on music therapy interaction processes in the family system. The researchers have designed a randomized controlled pilot trial (INMUT) that specifically addresses family interaction in a multi-person setting.

Methods: The examiners investigate the efficacy of music therapy interventions involving the parent-child dyad (INMUT-KB, n=16) compared to music therapy interventions involving only the child (MUT-K, n=16) and a waiting group without intervention (WG, n=10).

Research questions: 1) Does the parent-child interaction improves in mutual attunement, nonverbal communication, and emotional parental response? 2) Are there effects on quality of life, psychosocial and psychosomatic impairments, and system-related level of functioning? Evaluation tools: Primary goals will be assessed by the music therapy-based Assessment of parent-child interaction (APCI) pre and post. The secondary objectives will be assessed by self-reports in form of the psychometric questionnaires KINDL, Experience in Social Systems Questionnaire (EXIS), Burden Assessment Scale (BAS) and Symptom Checklist-K-9 (SCL-9K) pre, post and follow up.

Discussion: The investigators hope for an improvement of the primary and secondary endpoints through participation in music therapy as a basis for a needs-oriented accompaniment of families.

Conditions

• Pediatric Cancer

Interventions

BEHAVIORAL

Interaction-focused Music Therapy with Children and Significant Others (INMUT-KB) (exp. group)

Interaction-focused music therapy with children with cancer and their significant others, delivered by trained music therapists.

BEHAVIORAL

Music Therapy with Children (MUT-K) (exp. group)

Interaction-focused music therapy with children with cancer without the involvement of significant others, delivered by trained music therapists.

BEHAVIORAL

Interaction-focused Music Therapy with Children and Significant Others (WG-KB) (control group)

Study participants randomized to this group receive the intervention INMUT 10 weeks after the experimental groups.

Sponsors & Collaborators

• Heidehof Foundation Stuttgart

  collaborator UNKNOWN

• Community Hospital Herdecke

  collaborator UNKNOWN

• Nordoff/Robbins Music Therapy Center Witten

  collaborator UNKNOWN

• Interprofessional Graduate Programm in Integrative Medicine IGIM

  collaborator UNKNOWN

• University of Witten/Herdecke

  lead OTHER

Principal Investigators

• Alfred Längler, Prof. Dr. · Gemeinschaftskrankenhaus Herdecke

• Dominik Schneider, Prof. Dr. · Klinikum Dortmund

• Michael Paulussen, Prof. Dr. · Vestische Kinderklinik Datteln

Study Design

Allocation

RANDOMIZED

Purpose

TREATMENT

Masking

SINGLE

Model

PARALLEL

Eligibility

Min Age

5 Years

Max Age

13 Years

Sex

ALL

Healthy Volunteers

No

Timeline & Regulatory

Start

2023-03-01

Primary Completion

2024-08-31

Completion

2024-11-30

Countries

• Germany

Study Locations