Why We Need To Incorporate Music More Into Public Health (via Forbes)
Who here exercises without music, right?
Hi all.
I published an article on Forbes today on music and public health, a topic I’ve been thinking more and more about. I feel we get a study published weekly about how music can be a tool to improve a particular condition or treatment. Yet, a scan of global health policies (and please let me know if I’ve missed something) shows that music remains an ad-hoc integration into public health, rather than something that is taken as seriously as any other therapeutic. Music may not a panacea, but along with other art forms (painting, audiovisual), I feel it is an undervalued asset we could use more to make ourselves, and our communities, healthier. So I wrote about it. I’ve copied and pasted it below, but here’s the original article.
Let me know what you think in the comments.
Music is a powerful and cost-effective asset that can make us healthier. Why don’t we treat it as such across our national health policies?
While the music industry continues to grow in size and value every year, one aspect of it is still underestimated by the industry and policymakers—its impact on our health. Few strategic, top-down integrations incorporate music into improving healthcare outcomes or reducing associated costs on healthcare infrastructure, despite mounting evidence that music—across various conditions—is a powerful tool for both, from reducing pain to lowering prescription drug usage to rehabilitation and mental health. Now, more than ever is the time for this to change.
The world is getting older in some places and sicker in others. This puts additional strain on healthcare systems, the availability and cost of drugs, and the capacity of healthcare professionals to manage needs, time and resources. Across Western economies, the population is ageing at an accelerated pace. Whether we like it or not, we are getting older in the U.K., US and Europe. In 2022, 19% of the U.K. population was over 65. In 2027, that will increase to 27%, or 22.1 million people. More than 1 in 10 Japanese people are over 80, and 23 countries will see their population cut in half by 2100 due to depopulation. At the same time, the World Health Organization estimates that 970 million people are living with mental health challenges, including 14% of the world’s adolescents. In addition, climate catastrophe continued intrapersonal crisis and increased migration further strain healthcare budgets.
We’ve Always Been Listening to The Music
Music has always supported and improved our health and wellbeing - both individually and collectively, as a species. There is evidence that music was incorporated into healthcare provisions in ancient Greece and Egypt, with songs being assumed to help heal ‘mania’. Music for ‘the soul’ has been incorporated into the earliest forms of what we define as organised religion. Scientifically, it has been used as a tool to treat anxiety as early as 1914, and social trends involving exercise and body image - for better and worse - have incorporated music from their onset. Imagine Jane Fonda exercising in total silence in the 1970s.
Still, its usage as a standalone treatment for acute or chronic symptoms is decades old rather than centuries, and interest has not yet meant that investment has followed suit. Music may not be a panacea, but its effectiveness is understated and underinvested. A National Institute of Health study predicted that music interventions (along with other art forms) could save 70% on costs associated with hospital admissions. Music was proven to assuage the impact of the pandemic lockdown. At the same time, respondents to the same study reported a 59% improvement in mental health because of the music they were listening to.
There’s more, lots more. A longitudinal study across 20 countries reported that over 70% of respondents use music to relieve pain. A South African study claimed that going to see live music fortnightly increased life expectancy by up to 9 years (assuming nothing else was consumed at said gigs, of course). Moreover, the U.K. government estimates that cultural intervention delivers up to £1300 in benefits per person per year to the exchequer, while the European Journal of Public Health reported in yet another separate study that its “findings suggest that active musical participation can lead to beneficial effects on both cognitive and psychosocial functioning.”
Research Is Not Leading to Policy and Investment
The research is there. The scientific community has accumulated enough evidence to demonstrate a correlation between music and improved public health. Policymakers - and the music industry to some extent - are not listening. One could argue an element of tone-deafness or, at the very least, ignorance to recognise the potential impact this could have on minds, hearts, life expectancies and national coffers. No country has a national music health policy or a set of holistic, all-encompassing guidelines to measure and understand the role of music in healthcare. Music and health is a niche market, rarely integrated into economic forecasts about the potential value of an industry that is seeing more people in more places press play more often. Music is not embodied, as a policy, in preventative or therapeutic healthcare targets. But there are green shoots. The U.K. is ramping up social prescribing, and industry investments exist, such as Universal Music Group’s investment in stroke recovery start-up MedRhythms or its partnership with Thrive.
Still, these are too few and far between. As a result, for the most part, ad-hoc issue-specific non-profits like Nordoff Robbins or Musicians in Hospitals and Care lead the way, doing the job that governments, especially in countries with ageing populations, should be doing. And these benefits are reciprocal. Investing in music through health can further develop music ecosystems, as this would mean more musicians and practitioners are needed to support the economy but also provide external cost benefits to help external social challenges, like tackling loneliness, improving integration and reducing recidivism.
As the world changes, both in how countries age and, importantly, in countries and regions get younger, the potential role and impact that music can have will increase. The more climate-related emergencies we experience, the more it will affect our mental health. More people will be living with chronic conditions year after year. If the world continues its trend to prioritise income inequality over broader economic development, we will see increasing poverty and the physical and mental illnesses it brings. Music may not be a panacea. It may not be for everyone. However, as our universal language, it should be a universal treatment option.
Last month, the former head of the human genome project, Dr Francis Collins, remarked in an interview with comedian Stephen Colbert that music - both listening to and playing it - was one of the most exciting areas of inquiry his team was looking at, alongside singer Renee Fleming. To him, “when you listen to a piece of music that really moves you. It gives you a chill and causes you to suddenly feel transported. A lot of people see this as a window, both to how the brain works and to how we can come up with something that could help people who are suffering.” We need more of that now, more than ever, everywhere. It’s about time.