Browsing by Subject "muusikot"

The profession of a musician is defined by factors that can expose to specific health related issues. One of the most common ones is performance anxiety that can, in severe cases, cause suffering, impair the ability to function, and even lead to giving up one’s career. The ways of self-treatment might not be efficient or might even be harmful to musician’s health, and therefore professional help is vital in the treatment of music performance anxiety. There is no uniform theoretical view of music performance anxiety neither a common treatment practice, which makes successful treatment more challenging. The aim of this literature review is to form a more coherent view of music performance anxiety and summarize potential interventions studied so far. The literature used was recent research in the field of music performance anxiety. Music performance anxiety can be divided into different, greatly interconnected dimensions such as social, cognitive, and somatic dimensions. It is thought to be developed through a negative cycle, which is affected by for example the social characteristics of the performance situation, the arousal of the performer, and their cognitive appraisal. These can form specific learning experience, which possibly strengthens the negative cycle when repeated. The purpose of the intervention is to stop this negative cycle and help to unlearn the possible debilitating thought and action models behind it. The current research states that the behavioural and cognitive methods have the biggest role in the treatment of music performance anxiety. Methods using relaxing and breathing techniques can help especially with the symptoms caused by heightened arousal in performance situations. Also, medical treatment has proven to be one possible way to alleviate these somatic symptoms. Nevertheless, other kinds of intervention methods are preferable inter alia because of the side effects medication may have. All in all, recent research has broadened the understanding of the multidimensional nature of music performance anxiety. In addition, there are great amount of potential intervention methods for music performance anxiety, although more, higher-quality research is needed to prove their efficiency.