A doctor in psychology has published a paper on the link between singing and loneliness after his charity group sang songs to elderly people in Bolton.
Dr Herbert Koyonda Ngamba set up the Ephrata Church Community group at The Victoria Hall in Bolton, where a choir regularly goes out to sing to the elderly in care homes.
Now, the doctor has produced a paper about his work at the community group, emphasising the positive effect of music on elderly people in care homes.
The group allowed residents to pick songs before they rehearsed them and and sung the tracks together.
Dr Ngamba said: “Because the project was so successful, we decided to publish it especially as I am an academic in psychology.
“I want it to reach a lot of people in Bolton because they don’t know what we can do with music and to make a difference in the lives of the elderly people in care homes.”
The project started in 2015 and ended in 2019 as the 2020 lockdown put an end to going into care homes, but the doctor hopes to restart soon.
He said: “After the singing, we ask them how they know about the song and they start to tell us their stories and talk about their history of listening to the song.
“Songs like 'Oh Happy Days' are popular and we go and rehearse them before we sing them.
“We get the lyrics and they sing together with us.
Originally from the Democratic Republic of the Congo, Dr Ngamba arrived in the UK in 2002 and studied at both the University of Bolton and university in Manchester. He now has a PHD in psychology.
The doctor worked for the NHS for some time while studying and said he noticed that a lot of elderly people were lonely.
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He said: “That's when I got the idea I wanted to do something about it.
“I spoke to the care homes and asked if we could bring our choir in to sing songs they liked and enjoyed, and it all started from there.”
The group has made such a difference that Woodland Hospital in Little Hulton invited the team down to sing to them.
Care homes the choir has sung to includes Laburnum Lodge and Darley Court.
The paper is published in The Journal of Gerontological Nursing is called Benefits of Running a Multicultural Singing Project Among Older Adults in a Naturalistic Residential Environment: Case Studies of Four Residential Care Homes in England, and can be found here. (https://journals.healio.com/doi/10.3928/00989134-20220808-04)
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