Everyone has a song that will make them smile on a miserable day or can move them to tears before the first chorus but, according to Cambridge Neuroscience, music can do more than simply change our mood.

Brain researchers from the University of Cambridge in Cambridge, UK, who have been exploring the issues surrounding mental health and its treatment through music, hosted a concert on Sept. 29th called Music and Mind, reflecting on how their findings can help make a difference to the lives of people affected by mental illness.

“The social process of making music in a group can be very therapeutic, no doubt about it,” says Peter Jones, head of the Department of Psychiatry. “But it’s not an evening about music as therapy – music can be beneficial to us all whether or not you’ve got a mental illness.”

The concert included performances of songs by the 19th century German composer Robert Schumann, whose life was blighted by mental illness, music by Simon Gunton and the Looney Tunes Music group – many of its members have suffered mental illness – followed by a performance by Scottish pianist Alasdair Beatson.

The concert started by exploring the links between creativity, musical composition, mental health and illness, with particular reference to song. The talk was followed by a selection of songs by Robert Schumann - The Many Moods.

Music and Mind also celebrated the remarkable achievements in the musical sphere of people who have been affected by severe mental illness, such as Robert Schumann.

“Schumann died when he was 46,” says Jones. “He made a serious suicide attempt three years before he died and he spent the last two-and-a-half years of his life in a private mental asylum. It’s a moot point exactly what happened in the end, but he may have starved himself to death.”

“His composing life was punctuated by some periods when he was simply in very severe depression and he was too depressed to compose and then he’d come out of it and compose again.”

Although some researchers believe that exceptional creativity and mental illness are connected, Jones dismisses such a link.

“There is an idea out there that genius and creativity come at a cost, and the cost that very creative people have to pay is in terms of mental illness,” he says. “I don’t honestly subscribe to that because there are a lot of fantastic composers who don’t have a mental illness and lots of people with mental illness who are just ordinary people.”

“But if they have had a mental illness it will change them and it will influence their music, so it also shows that if you suffer from a mental illness it doesn’t mean you become in any sense a hopeless case. You can still maintain creativity and genius.”

Many biographies of Robert Schumann focus entirely on his mental illness and his incredible talent as a composer comes second. Jones discussed the present-day problem of stigma for people suffering from a mental illness, which has also been conveyed by British director Joe Wright in his latest film, The Soloist. The film examines the healing power of music for schizophrenic Nathaniel Ayers, for whom music is medicine.

Cheryl Frances-Hoad, an award- winning composer and a Leverhulme Trust Artist in Residence at the Department of Psychiatry at Cambridge University, has been observing a research group at the department, which has been studying the state of psychosis.

“The psychiatry team I’ve been working with have been looking into issues with schizophrenia, and, I suppose, the ultimate aim is to make people’s lives better,” says Frances-Hoad. “The things that they’re researching are just amazingly specific. The cure is still a very long way off but they’re working on things like perception and how people with mental illness might perceive things differently.”

Jones adds: “It’s not as though music is like a magic bullet, but the important thing is the creative aspect, whether you’re creating a composition or creating a performance.

“I’ve never come across an event like Music and Mind, where you’re mixing a grass-roots, community-led group of young people who’ve recently been through a very tough time with a severe mental illness, right through to some top professional singers.”

Neuroscientists from across Cambridge were available before and after the concert to discuss their research and how they hoped it might increase fundamental understanding of the brain and improve patient treatment.

Source: Cambridge News