Association between attending cultural events and all-cause mortality: a longitudinal study with three measurements (1982–2017)

Abstract

ObjectivesTo examine the association between cultural attendance and all-cause mortality.DesignA longitudinal cohort study over 36 years (1982–2017) with three 8-year interval measurements of exposure (1982/1983, 1990/1991 and 1998/1999) to cultural attendance and a follow-up period to 31 December 2017.SettingSweden.ParticipantsThe study included 3311 randomly selected individuals from the Swedish population with complete data for all three measurements.Primary outcome measurementsAll-cause mortality during the study period in relation to level of cultural attendance. Cox regression models with time-varying covariates were used to estimate HRs adjusted for potential confounders.ResultsThe HRs of cultural attendance in the lowest and middle levels compared with the highest level (reference; HR=1) were 1.63 (95% CI 1.34 to 2.00) and 1.25 (95% CI 1.03 to 1.51), respectively.ConclusionAttending cultural events has a suggested gradient, the lesser cultural exposure the higher all-cause mortality during the follow-up.

A longitudinal study of the association between attending cultural events and coronary heart disease

“…The main strengths were the approach of using both MSM-Cox with IPW together with Cox proportional hazard regression models on longitudinal data including three measurements during a follow-up of 36 years in both men and women. Furthermore, the findings of an association between cultural exposure and CHD were in-line with previous findings on mortality from more traditional epidemiological design 5 – 8 . The consistency of our results with those from other studies further supports the validity and robustness of our findings.…”

“…In psychology, the evidence on leisure’s strengthening effect on health has been accumulating 3 and animal trials have found an enriched environment to be associated with learning and health in mice 2 , 4 . In medicine, attendance at fine arts events was found to be inversely associated with all-cause mortality by our group over two decades ago 5 , which has been replicated in several studies over the intervening years 6 – 8 . However, the potentially causal relationship between cultural activities and the most common causes of mortality 9 , 10 has not yet been established.…”