From helping with concentration and boosting brain power (‘the Mozart effect‘) to helping with various disorders including heart conditions, mental health disorders and Alzheimer’s disease (music therapy), music has long been thought to have positive benefits.
Now a new international study published in JAMA Network Open has found that music helped people manage their stress during the most severe part of the COVID-19 pandemic.
Throughout the study, researchers followed the music listening habits of 711 people in Europe in mid-2020, who self-reported how much music they were listening to and how stressed they felt over the period of a week.
Listening to music was associated with less stress at the time of listening and improved overall mood – this, the researchers say, was especially true if the music listened to was perceived as happy. Those suffering from chronic stress were able to improve their mood by listening to music.
“The present findings suggest that music listening may be a means to modulate stress and mood during psychologically demanding periods,” conclude the researchers, adding that music is “an easily accessible tool for the management of stress and mood in daily life”.
