Health status and preventive health behavior of music students during university education: Merging prior results with new insights from a German multicenter study

Musicians are at high risk of developing playing-related health problems. A considerable number of musicians suffer from severe health issues even during their university education. In previous studies using similar music student populations, health status and preventive health behavior could be classified into three groups. The first group of students did not report playing-related health problems and did not engage in preventive activities. The second group of students experienced rather low-level playing-related health problems and practiced preventive activities. The third group reported a rather high frequency of playing-related health problems and all of them were taking medication. These results were obtained from studies done at one German university of music. In order to compare these results with a nationwide sample of music students, a multicenter study at five German universities of music was performed. A total of 288 music students participated in the first survey at the beginning of their university education, 142 in the second survey at the start of their third semester and 75 in the third survey at the start of the last year of their university education. The data was analyzed using the same methods as the prior studies. The results confirmed the group classifications identified in previous studies. While approximately half the students indicated that they participated in preventive health behavior in the first survey, in the following two surveys more than three-quarters of the students reported practicing such activities during the course of their university education. Nevertheless, in all three surveys a large number (about a third) of music students reported playing-related health problems.