Making music doesn't always make you happy
An international research team has investigated the link between making music and mental health in more detail. On average, musically active people appear to have a slightly higher genetic risk of depression and bipolar disorder.
In 2019, a research team was able to prove a connection between musical engagement and mental health problems for the first time in a large population study: Around 10,500 Swedish test subjects provided information about both their musical activities and their mental well-being. In addition, the data was linked to the Swedish patient register so that psychiatric diagnoses could also be evaluated. The result was that musically active people actually reported depression, burn-out and psychotic symptoms more frequently than those who did not make music. The results were published in the open access journal Scientific Reports.
The team subsequently expanded its research to include methods of molecular genetics. They discovered that genetic variants that influence mental health problems and those that influence musical engagement partially overlap. The results of this second study were recently published in the open access journal Translational Psychiatry.
