Researchers from the German National Cohort (NAKO) have investigated the connection between the musical activity of amateur musicians and their mental and physical health. They also focussed in particular on the question of how the pandemic has affected the mental health of musically active people. The analysis of the surveys of NAKO participants showed that the self-reported mental health of singers in particular has become worse during the pandemic.
Singing, playing instruments and listening to music can have a positive effect on health. “So far, however, there have been few findings from epidemiological studies that look at the effects of amateur music on individual mental and physical health,” says Dr Lilian Krist, head of the Berlin-Mitte Study Centre at Charité. “We therefore analysed socio-demographic and health-related factors in 6,717 adults from the German National Cohort (NAKO) and also took a closer look at the impact of the coronavirus pandemic in 2020 on the mental health of 3,666 musically active people compared to non-musically active people.”
Of the approximately 6,700 respondents to the German National Cohort (NAKO) conducted by the Berlin-Mitte Study Centre, 53 percent had been musically active at least once in their lives, and seven percent had played music all their lives. A more detailed analysis of the data showed that musically active people were more likely to have a higher level of education and were less likely to be overweight than musically inactive people.
During the first wave of the COVID-19 pandemic in 2020, a number of measures were introduced in Germany to minimise contact. These also affected amateur musicians. Another study by NAKO researchers with almost 3,600 respondents examined the link between musical activity and mental health before and during the pandemic. Of the respondents, 22.1 per cent were musically active, of which 15.1 per cent sang and 14.5 per cent played an instrument. The participants were asked about their individual mental health using standardised questionnaires, which allowed conclusions to be drawn about symptoms of depression or anxiety disorders.
“Our study results show that people who sang frequently were already less mentally stable than non-musicians before the pandemic. In addition, their deterioration in mental well-being due to depressive phases or anxiety during the pandemic was even more pronounced compared to non-musicians,” says Professor Dr Heiko Becher from the Institute of Global Health at Heidelberg University Hospital (UKHD). “Instrumentalists were – according to their self-reported data – slightly less mentally stressed during the pandemic than non-musicians, albeit only slightly, which indicates a possible positive effect of playing an instrument on mental health.”