Get Cultured! Engagement In Cultural Activities Proven To Combat Depression

Cultural engagement does more than just keep you involved in the world around you, new studies are suggesting that it actually can help with depression, and aiding mental health in general. Cultural engagement can be defined as anything active or passive that connects you to certain elements of the human experience. For example, going to the symphony, or playing the violin yourself, singing, or going to a concert, going to a museum, or painting a landscape. It doesn’t matter the scale of the engagement as long as some aspect of human culture is involved. 

The University College London recently posted a research essay in the The Journal of British Psychiatry covering their findings on cultural engagement. They performed a “study of 2,148 people aged 50 and older over a 10-year period and found those who do at least one cultural activity every few months have a 32% lower risk of developing depression than those who don’t, while those who engage in at least one cultural pursuit a month have a 48% lower risk.” It’s important to note that all subjects were determined to not have depression at the beginning of the study. 

The study was also done in relation to individuals who are facing retirement and unsure of the next steps in their lives. Retirement is known to have heavy effects on a person’s mental health if that individual has no real sense of direction or desire post-retirement. It often leads to feelings of not belonging in the world and loneliness, so when researchers monitored the cultural activities that these seniors were involved in, they were astounded by the shift in mood that they witnessed. 

“Those who engaged in active cultural pursuits regularly enjoyed better overall physical health, fewer doctor visits, less medication usage, fewer falls, less loneliness and better morale one year later, versus those who didn’t,” according to the study’s conclusion.

According to Market Watch Magazine, cultural engagement involves the three “protective factors” that are known to help with treating depression. It involves cognitive stimulation, social interaction and gentle physical activity. These three things work together to improve your overall mental and physical health. Engagement in the world around us stimulates our brains in a way that’s intriguing to us. We’re learning about a certain aspect of the human experience, and yet it doesn’t feel like sitting in a boring class, because it’s our experience as well. When we hear the word culture, also, we normally associate it with our own personal background and the elements that make up our own lives. There’s so many different cultures and communities in the world and that’s what makes the engagement in these communities so effective in treating depression. Not only are we expanding our knowledge on a particular aspect of what it is to live, but we’re also learning about ourselves, and why we are the way we are personally.

One of the biggest cultural aspects that is universally known to help improve mental health is music. Since music is one of the most diverse industry’s in the world, there’s proven studies that show listening to certain music for certain lengths of time can help improve ones emotional well being. Music can motivate us, comfort us, thrill us, and can be synced up to move with us while we go about our daily lives; whether that be working in an office, going for a run, or driving across the state. The study specifically showed that any individual in the group who engaged in musical events such as concerts or classes all experienced a similar cognitive response. Researchers measured that all these individuals were using the parts of their brain responsible for processing positive emotions while engaging in music specific cultural activities.

Cultural activities require a cognitive and perceptive engagement, so even if we go to a museum, for example, and don’t really want to be there, as time goes on we begin using our brains more to process and understand what we’re looking at in the museum. We also are using the parts of our brains responsible for perception, not only of what we’re looking at in the museum, but with our current surrounding environment. This sort of engagement and mental stimulation helps to train the brain to desire that kind of activity, according to the study.  So as we get older it becomes more and more important to connect to our culture. Whether it be our specific families cultural background, or branching out to understand another community and the differences that actually connect us as humans, cultural activities are proven to improve overall mood and cognitive function.