In Monday’s (9/9) Pacific Standard (Santa Barbara), Tom Jacobs writes that a recent study by two Australian researchers “reports 84 percent of professional orchestral musicians in that nation [have] experienced ‘performance-impairing pain’ at some point, and 50 percent were experiencing symptoms at the time of the survey. The study, published in the journal Psychology of Music, also finds a complicated relationship between players’ physical pain and depression. Dianna Kenny and Bronwen Ackermann of the University of Sydney asked all musicians in the nation’s eight premiere orchestras (including opera orchestras) to participate in the study. An impressive 70 percent, or 377, agreed to do so. The players filled out a series of questions designed to measure performance anxiety, generalized anxiety, and depression. They were then asked how often, and how severely, they experienced performance-related musculoskeletal disorders.… Interestingly, a large majority of musicians who denied experiencing any symptoms of depression reported either little or no physical pain, or severe pain.” Kenny and Ackermann “recommend that pain treatment for professional musicians ‘would be more effective if depression and/or music performance anxiety were assessed and, where indicated, treated concurrently.’ ”
Posted September 13, 2013
