Singing in a choir can improve your mental health, a new study has found. Researchers carried out an online survey of 375 people who sang in choirs, sang alone, or played team sports. All three activities produced high levels of psychological well-being(健康), but choristers stood out as experiencing the greatest benefit. The findings could help develop low-cost treatment to improve people’s well-being, researchers suggest.
Compared with the way sports players regarded their teams, choral singers also viewed their choirs as more “meaningful”. Nick Stewart, from Oxford Brookes University, who led the study, said, “Research has already suggested that joining a choir could be a cost-effective(划算的) way to improve people’s well-being.” In previous studies experts claimed that joining a choir could improve symptoms of Parkinson’s depression and lung disease though.
Mr Stewart will present the findings at the annual meeting of the British Psychological Society’s Division of Clinical Psychology in York today. The fact that the group, made of 197 women and 178 men, found singing in a choir was “significantly” more effective at improving their mood than a team sport could be due to the synchronicity(同步性) of the activity, Mr Stewart said. “The implications may be that any activity we do as part of a group is particularly enjoyable,” he said. “But people who sang in a choir had a stronger sense of being part of a meaningful group and there is a suggestion that there is something unique about the synchronicity of moving and breathing with other people.”
The findings echo(附和) the experiences of Siobhan Patten, a social worker for Birmingham Council who featured on The Choir: Sing While You Work last month. She told the Guardian, “It was a great moment for me when I realized that I had an outlet for all the emotions I was carrying, and the choir became my much-needed therapy(治疗). I had never before realized the incredible healing powers of music.”
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