Joining a choir may help elders enjoy life

NEW YORK, Dec 9, (RTRS): Singing in a community choir may provide some psychological benefit to seniors, a small study suggests.

Researchers had primarily hoped to see choir participation yield improvements in elderly people’s thinking skills and physical fitness, but that didn’t happen. They did, however, see improvements in loneliness and interest in life among seniors in the singing groups.

The study was conducted at 12 senior centers serving racially and ethnically diverse communities in and around San Francisco. Half of the centers were randomly selected for the choir program; the others served as a control group.

Ultimately, 208 people participated in the choirs and 182 in the control group. None of them had been singing regularly with other groups.

Overall, the average age was 71, and three-quarters of participants were women. Two-thirds reported being from minority racial or ethnic backgrounds. Forty-one percent had been born outside the US, 20 percent reported financial hardship, 25 percent reported fair or poor health and 60 percent had at least two chronic medical conditions.

Depression

Roughly one in four participants had depression, but no one who enrolled in the study had any cognitive problems, the authors report in the journal Innovation in Aging.

More than half of the patients in the choir group (55 percent) had not previously sung in a choir as an adult, and more than half (56 percent) rated their musical ability as poor or fair.

Each of the choirs met 23 times over the course of six months. Professional choir conductors led the sessions, which also included physical activities such as walking to different parts of the room to sing. More than 90 percent of people in both groups stayed in the study for the whole six months.

At the end, there were no significant differences between the groups in the primary outcome measures of the study: scores on tests of cognitive function, lower body strength and overall psycho-social health.

There were, however, significant improvements in two components of the psycho-social evaluation among choir participants. People in this group were feeling less lonely, and they were more interested in life – that is, their responses to survey questions indicated they were more interested in things, got more things done, were doing more interesting things and felt more motivated. Seniors in the control group, meanwhile, did not see a large change in their scores for loneliness at the end of the six months, and their interest in life declined slightly.

“Because music (and singing) is integral to most cultures and are relatively easy and low-cost to deliver in community settings, community choirs . . . have the potential to improve the well-being of a large number of older adults,” study leader Julene Johnson of the University of California, San Francisco told Reuters Health by email.

Older adults who feel lonely are more likely to be at risk of declining motor functions, poor physical well-being and even death, studies have shown.

Johnson’s study adds to older research showing that music may give adults the opportunity to remain active and engaged.