Musicians and Mental Health: Playing, Self-Awareness & Music

This piece follows on from last week and looks at the relationship between musicians and mental health, the research surrounding playing or making music, and my own personal experience of this.

There is growing research exploring the relationship between active music-making and psychological wellbeing. One large study involving 14,265 Danish musicians from mixed musical backgrounds found that men and women who engaged in active daily music-making were more likely to report good health, with positive associations with anxiety and depression. The study also identified gender differences, with women's daily music-making associated with a greater likelihood of good physical and mental health and lower perceived stress.

Interestingly, and perhaps not surprisingly, the findings also reported that musically active men were more likely to engage in high-risk behaviours. Although the individual professions of the musicians were not identified, the study provides some interesting insight into the complex relationship between playing an instrument, music-making and mental health.

In a follow-up study, despite previously reported good levels of mental health, active professional musicians also disclosed relatively high levels of unhealthy behaviours, including excessive smoking, drinking and cannabis use. The findings highlight something important: feeling that music-making is contributing positively to our mental health does not necessarily mean that other behavioural difficulties or psychological struggles have disappeared.

Perhaps this also points to our human fallibility and our difficulty in recognising destructive behaviours, even when we feel that we are doing better or that music-making is helping us.

I know from personal experience that there were many areas where I lacked objective clarity when I was at the height of my career. One example involved the way I viewed the music industry itself. It wasn't until I had experienced my own therapeutic journey that I could begin to see more clearly how I had contributed to some of my own struggles in relationships with band members, management and others around me.

This is something Tom Hingley also discussed in his interview back in September on Tonic Radio. As Tom says, being at the wheel of our own ship, together with a growing (or sometimes lack of) self-awareness, can have a lot to answer for.

This objective clarity can become even more difficult when we are experiencing our own mental health struggles within a notoriously demanding environment. Some musicians also enter the music industry with an existing mental health diagnosis, while others may experience difficulties as their careers develop.

All of these elements can combine and interact in complex and individual ways. Music-making can be an important resource for wellbeing, but it doesn't necessarily protect us from psychological difficulties, unhealthy behaviours or the pressures that come with working in music.

For musicians, developing greater self-awareness may therefore be an important part of understanding not only how music affects our mental health, but also how we respond to the wider psychological pressures of a career in music.