April is Stress Awareness Month! To celebrate, we’re trying out a special feature we’ll call Findings on Friday – wherein we’ll explore research on the science of wellbeing – in particular, surprising, unexpected, and unsung facts, theories and findings – and how we can apply this info in everyday life.
This month, we’ll focus on the larger goal theme of Stress Management and Recovery, diving into a specific method/mechanism theme each week. This week, we’ll examine a surprisingly good stress management tool: Music.
Read to the end to participate in a little creative collaboration on music and wellbeing!
You know that feeling you get when they’re playing your song? As it turns out, those feelings that music evokes can have significant links to our overall health and wellbeing. 
Last month in the online Journal of the American Medical Association (JAMA Network), a meta analysis and review of of 26 studies including 779 participants examining on the effects of music interventions was published. The authors reported that music interventions, including making and listening to music, are associated with statistically and clinically significant positive effects on mental health quality of life. Further research is needed, but this review support
s a growing body of research indicating that music can improve wellbeing.
Another review and study analysis published last year in Frontiers in Psychology concluded that shared music listening experiences (such as at parties or concerts) can build social connections, and has positive effects on self-reported social wellbeing. The analysis also found that in some studies, intentional music listening (as in, the listener chooses the music) has been demonstrated to reduce
pain in some patients through the effects of physiological arousal. Music listening is correlated with evoked positive emotion, which has an inverse effect on stress. For decades, research has shown that emotions stimulate responses in the body that affect levels of
neurochemicals such as dopamine, serotonin, cortisol, endorphin, and oxytocin. The theory, in other words: we listen to music, good feelings emerge, brain chemistry is benefitted, stress is counteracted, and health is improved.
Chapter 27 of Music, Health, and Wellbeing also examines the effects of music listening on everyday health. The authors discuss the fact that music may be uniquely suited to help manage emotions and stress in everyday life – a claim that is resonated in a study on the use of music as a tool for emotion regulation and stress mangement during COVID-19 lockdown. The chapter provides several points as a theoretical basis, including the observation that, since cultural activities are known to be positively correlated with stress and recovery, and since music is a cultural activity that can be enjoyed every day on-demand, is readily accessible in any area of society (for those with the ability to perceive sound), and can be administered in any context, it may be a promising tool, not just for individual health and wellbeing, but for broader public health as well.
If you’re a music lover, these findings are probably not surprising after all. But when we dive into the research, we find plenty of ways to affirm that putting on our favorite tunes is actually good for us, in lots of different ways. Music holds promising possibilities for regulating and recovering from stress — and can be an easy and accessible way to support your wellbeing.
Creative collab: What song or songs boost your mood and improve your wellbeing?
Click here to submit your go-to song(s) for feeling good.
If we get enough responses, we’ll make a playlist to share with the Wellbeing listserv!
