Demands and resources associated with mental health among Norwegian professional musicians

Abstract

Background: Previous studies indicate a variety of health challenges among musicians. Despite this, less is known concerning the roles of work-related and personal factors associated with the musicians' mental health.

Objective: We wanted to investigate personal and work-related demands and resources associated with psychological distress in professional musicians.

Methods: Based on a sample of 1,607 of professional Norwegian musicians, we conducted a hierarchical multiple regression analysis.

Results: We found that personal factors such as level of neuroticism and sense of mastery had the strongest association with PD. Extraversion, openness to experience, conscientiousness, job demands and social support did also contribute to distress in our final statistical model, but to a lesser degree. Somewhat surprisingly, work-family conflict, effort-reward imbalance and job control were not associated with PD in our final model.

Conclusions: Our results show that both work-related factors (job demands and social support) and personal resources (personality and sense of mastery) are associated with PD among musicians in this cross-sectional study. Prospective research is needed in order to investigate these associations further. Meanwhile, we suggest to emphasize early development of sense of mastery and social support in music education and industry.

Keywords: Work environment; job demands-resources; musicians’ health; personality; psychological distress.