Push Back Sadness and Promote Health with Arts and Music

If you paint, dance or play a musical instrument — or merely enjoy going to the theatre or to concerts — it’s likely that you are feeling fitter and are less depressed than folk who do not a survey of nearly fifty thousand people from all socio-economic backgrounds from a county in mid-Norway shows.

The discoveries are drawn from the most recent round of studies conducted for the Norwegian college of Science and Technology’s ( NTNU ) Nord-Trndelag Health Study, or HUNT, which used questionnaires, interviews, clinical examinations and the collection of urea and blood samples to assemble detailed health profiles of 48,289 partakers.

“There is a positive relationship between cultural collaboration and self-perceived health for both ladies and men, “says Professor Jostein Holmen, a HUNT analyst who presented the findings, which havenot yet been revealed, at a Norwegian health meeting in Stjrdal in late November. “For men, there is also a positive relationship between cultural participation and depression, in that there is less depression among men who take part in cultural activities, though this is not true for women.”

But what surprised the medical analyst was that these findings remained true no matter the person’s socio-economic status — whether van driver or bank president, participating in some shape in the arts, theatre or music, as player or player, had a constructive effect on that individual’s sense of well-being and health.

The new discoveries were controlled for socioeconomic status, lingering sickness, social capital, smoking and alcohol. However , Holmen also reported that the same sense of contentment in people who take part in cultural activities that appeared to protect them from depression didnot appear to have the same beneficial effect on agitation.

Holmen cautioned the organisation between health and cultural activities isn’t tough enough to allow him to say that culture basically makes people healthy. However, the analyst says the findings ought to challenge politicians to think differently about health. Steinar Krokstad, HUNT’s director and an associate teacher at NTNU, concluded.

“We in the health services don’t always have control over the most effective preventive tools given the range of today’s sicknesses. We want to increasingly target opportunities instead of on risk,” Krokstad recounted.

Bottom line is if you want to feel better perhaps consider something like beginner acoustic guitar lessons.. Or piano lessons or heck even the tubba.

( Source : Music and the Arts Fight Depression, Promote Health )
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