A choir made up of 35 cancer patients and survivors will be appearing in “Sing for Your Life” on Channel 4 as part of the channel’s “Stand Up To Cancer” campaign.

The Big C choir is run and supported by Tenovus, Wales' leading cancer charity. The charity carried out pioneering research about the positive effects of singing in a group- and now runs choirs across Wales for people touched by cancer in some way. 

The research has been published in the open access cancer journal ecancermedicalscience which means that an international audience can read it for free.

Nichola Gale, part of a team from Cardiff University led by Robert van Deursen, in collaboration with Ian Lewis from Tenovus, invited participants of the Tenovus choir to take part in a research project which monitored their attitudes and health over a three month period. Emotional and physical effects of participating in a choir have been studied before, but this work is the first to specifically target cancer survivors and their carers.

Participants were asked to complete three questionnaires on quality of life (QoL, SF-36), anxiety and depression (HAD) and fatigue (MFI-20) both before and after the three month choir experience. Since singing requires controlled respiration, their lung capacity was also monitored.

In addition, at the end of the three month period, 10 out of the 23 finishing participants were interviewed in order to gain additional insight into the perceived effects of the choir.

Analysis of the questionnaires revealed an improvement in factors ranging from vitality to mental health and reduced anxiety and depression after the three month period.

There was no change in the level of fatigue or change in lung capacity, but there was a trend of increased maximal expiratory static mouth pressure (MEP), a test of the strength of respiratory muscles.

The perceived benefit of the choir was quite clear based on data from the interviewed participants. They commented on the benefits of having a common goal and looking forward to the performances. Overall, participation in the choir lifted the mood of many of the participants and gave them a sense of achievement.

The results of this pilot study are generally in agreement with earlier studies on the effects of singing. It was suggested that participation in a choir could benefit sufferers of many chronic diseases, not just cancer survivors. Based on these results, a larger study is warranted.

Reference:

NS Gale, S Enright, C Reagon, I Lewis and R van Deursen (2012) A pilot investigation of quality of life and lung function following choral singing in cancer survivors and their carers ecancer 4 261 DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.3332/ecancer.2012.261

Video interviews discussing the work of Tenovus and the Big C Choir can be found here and here

Sing for Your Life is produced by Exclusive TV for Channel 4 and will be aired at 8pm on Monday 15^th October.