Are Music Engagement and Mental Illness Related?

According to a study released in March by researchers at Frankfurt’s Max Planck Institute for Empirical Aesthetics, people engaged in making music are at a higher risk for mental illnesses such as depression and anxiety. Results of the study suggest there is an overlap between inherited genetic variants associated with a tendency to make music, and those that increase the risk for mental illness.

Laura Wesseldijk is an author of the study alongside Yi Lu, Robert Karlsson, Fredrik Ullén, and Miriam Mosing. She describes herself as a “former musician,” and took trombone lessons for ten years. “That was really uncool at 15, so I started to play electric guitar in a rock band too,” she told me when I reached her in London, where she is currently working remotely. Wesseldijk decided to pursue science instead of the trombone, and now conducts research for the Max Planck Institute in collaboration with the Psychiatric Institute of Amsterdam University.