The Role of Active Musical Listening to Enhance the Emotional Health on Early Motherhood

Abstract

The purpose of this study was to identified the role of active musical listening on
emotional health and well-being in Javanese early motherhood. Listening to
music will not only have a soothing and uplifting effects on someone but also a
positive influence on the unborn baby. Feeling emotional during pregnancy is
common because of hormonal changes. And it‟s natural to feel more stressed or
anxious than usualy. Although it‟s normal to have periods of worry and stress
when pregnancy and this can be a sign of something more serious such as
depression, anxiety or bipolar disorder. Emotional health is a state of wellbeing.
An one way anova test with the pre-posttest scores as the control revealed that the
changes by listening the gendhing gamelan were significantly decreased in the
experimental group compared with the control group. A randomized experimental
study design was developed and implemented. A hundred and twenty of first
trimester pregnant women were randomly assigned to music listening (n=60) and
control (n=60) groups (mean age=29.0; SD=5.0). The experiment group received
5 minutes of music intervention and the control group received only general
prenatal care. Psychological health was assessed using three self -report measures:
State-Trait Anxiety Inventory (STAI) and Beck-Depression Inventory (BDI). The
result shows significant effect (p<0.05; F=5.340) of gendhing gamelan to reduce
stress and enhance the emotional well-being in early motherhood thus the
hypotheses is accepted. The findings can be used to encourage early motherhood
to use this cost-effective method of listening music in their daily life to reduce
their stress and enhance the emotional wellbeing. Further research is needed to
test the long-term benefits.