Predicting anxiety, depression, and wellbeing in professional and nonprofessional musicians

Abstract

People working in the music industry report significantly higher levels of anxiety and depression than the general population, but to date, studies have not explored the differences between professional musicians and those who perform music primarily for recreation. In this study, 254 musicians from 13 countries completed measures of anxiety, depression, and wellbeing as well as answering questions about their professional status, level of success, and income. Across the whole sample, we found that over half had high levels of anxiety, and a third were experiencing depression. We showed that musicians who viewed music as their main career were more likely to have poor mental wellbeing and had significantly higher levels of clinical depression. Status as a solo or lead artist and perceived level of success also significantly predicted higher levels of anxiety and depression, and lower levels of positive wellbeing. We conclude that low mental wellbeing in musicians is the result of working as a professional musician, as opposed to being an inherent trait. Future work should explore underlying beliefs and perceptions of career musicians alongside other key factors, such as health behaviors and social support, with the aim of making specific recommendations to the music industries and educators.

Musicians, their relationships, and their wellbeing: Creative labour, relational work

“…Interviewees were not offering medical diagnoses of conditions, but were instead expressing their feelings of anxiety and depression based on a variety of intersecting factors in their lives, of which their methods of relational work represented just one area. Certainly, recent evidence suggests that musicians are highly emotional attuned and that self-reported feelings of mental ill-heath do strongly correlate with clinical diagnoses too (Loveday et al, 2022). In this respect, these findings should be understood as contributing towards a broader area of academic enquiry seeking to bring together a range of psychosocial and cultural emotional triggers in the lives of musicians which are understood as offering one explanatory mechanism vis-à-vis high reported rates of mental ill-health amongst this population (Musgrave, 2022).…”

“…This particular dissolution of boundaries is typical of work in the creative industries (Hesmondhalgh & Baker, 2011: 11), where it has been seen that informality is a central feature of this work (Alacovska, 2018); a feature which has been linked to abuses of power and sexual harassment in the absence of formalised regulation with terrible impacts on wellbeing, particularly for women (Hennekam & Bennett, 2017). Indeed, this boundary blurring is further complicated for musicians given that what is work and what is leisure is not always clear, with even the concept of what constitutes being a 'professional' being seen in research to be subjective and not based on metrics which might be typical in other forms of work, such as being paid for example (Loveday et al, 2022). With managers too, definitions of roles and status as colleagues are not always clear.…”

“…Secondly, a small body of literature employs the concept of relational work in the study of musicians and musical labour (Alacovska, 2018;Barna, 2022), towards which the tensions and elucidation of the concept of 'mismatches' in this paper shines new empirical light. Finally, the paper contributes towards an emerging interest in the psychosocial causes of mental ill-health amongst musicians (Gross & Musgrave, 2017Loveday et al, 2022), highlighting here the relational causes of anxiety and depression in musicians' lives. Whilst financial precarity (Berg et al, 2022) or performance anxiety (Kenny, 2011;Kenny et al, 2004;van Kemenade et al, 1995), for instance, are well-known emotional triggers in the working careers of musicians, this paper draws attention to the more nuanced nature of relationship management and the subsequent relational work necessitated, as offering particular sources of tension in the management of relational (mis)matches.…”

‘Losing Work, Losing Purpose’: Representations of Musicians’ Mental Health in the Time of COVID-19

“…Better understanding the mental health of musicians has been a growing area of academic enquiry over the previous decade. An emerging body of evidence suggests that musicians experience higher levels of mental ill health than other occupational groups (Detari et al, 2020;Gross & Musgrave, 2016, 2017Loveday et al, 2022;Middlestadt & Fishbein, 1988;Vaag et al, 2016;Wills & Cooper, 1987) and may even have lower life expectancy (Bellis et al, 2012;Kenny & Asher, 2016). A range of factors related to the psychosocial working conditions of musicians have been cited as potential sources of emotional distress (Musgrave, 2022) including financial precarity (Parker, 2015;Berg, 2018), performance anxiety (Kenny et al, 2004;Kenny, 2011;van Kemenade et al, 1995), anti-social working hours (Dobson, 2011), the prevalence of alcohol or substance use (Forsyth et al, 2016), high levels of pressure to succeed (Shorter et al, 2018), the negative impact of musical work on family life (Vaag et al, 2014), missing loved ones whilst touring (Kenny & Ackermann, 2008;Kenny et al, 2012) and the particular challenges and stressors faced by female musicians (Conor et al, 2015;Gross & Musgrave, 2020).…”

Living with liminality: Reconceptualising music careers education and research

“…Loveday et al (2022) in their empirical study exploring music careers as a predictor of anxiety found that “low mental wellbeing in musicians is the result of working as a professional musician, as opposed to being an inherent trait” (p. 1). In other words, our field —our work environments and the beliefs, values, and expectations musicians bring to their activities—contributes to musicians’ increased risk of a range of poor mental health outcomes.…”