Music-Making and Depression and Anxiety Before and During the COVID-19 Pandemic-Results From the NAKO Cohort Study in Germany

Int J Public Health. 2024 Jun 24:69:1606993. doi: 10.3389/ijph.2024.1606993. eCollection 2024.

Abstract

Objectives: To investigate the association of musical activity with mental health during the COVID-19 pandemic.

Methods: A total of 3,666 participants reported their musical activity before and mental health indicators before and during the pandemic. Depression was assessed with the Patient Health Questionnaire, anxiety with the Generalized Anxiety Disorder scale. The association between mental health scores and musical activities was investigated using linear regression.

Results: Within the last 12 months, 22.1% of the participants reported musical activity (15.1% singing, 14.5% playing an instrument). Individuals with frequent singing as their main musical activity had higher scores before the pandemic than non-musicians and the worsening during the pandemic was more pronounced compared to non-musicians. Instrumentalists tended to have slightly lower scores than non-musicians indicating a possible beneficial effect of playing an instrument on mental health.

Conclusion: The pandemic led to a worsening of mental health, with singers being particularly affected. Singers showed poorer mental health before the pandemic. The tendency for instrumentalists to report lower depression scores compared to non-musicians may support the hypothesis that music-making has a beneficial effect on health.

Keywords: COVID-19; cohort; epidemiologic study; mental health; music making.

MeSH terms

  • Adult
  • Aged
  • Anxiety* / epidemiology
  • COVID-19* / epidemiology
  • COVID-19* / psychology
  • Cohort Studies
  • Depression* / epidemiology
  • Depression* / psychology
  • Female
  • Germany / epidemiology
  • Humans
  • Male
  • Mental Health
  • Middle Aged
  • Music* / psychology
  • Pandemics
  • SARS-CoV-2
  • Singing

Grants and funding

The author(s) declare that financial support was received for the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article. This project was conducted with data of the German National Cohort (NAKO) Study (www.nako.de). The German National Cohort (NAKO) Study has been funded by the German In review Federal Ministry of Education and Research (BMBF, Bundesministerium für Bildung und Forschung) (grant number 01ER1301A/B/C und 01ER1511D), the Federal States (“Länder”) and the Helmholtz Association, as well as the participating universities and institutes of the Leibniz Association. For the publication fee we acknowledge financial support by the Heidelberg University.