Nearly a third of professional UK musicians report poor mental wellbeing

Dance musicians have been found to have the worst mental health among professional musicians. Photograph: Everynight Images/Alamy

A census of nearly 6,000 professional musicians in the UK has found that 30% report having poor mental wellbeing, with another 11% feeling neither positive nor negative about it.

Musicians in Wales, Scotland and Northern Ireland report lower mental wellbeing than their English contemporaries, though the worst-affected region of all was north-east England, with 38% of its musicians affected. Dance music was the worst-affected genre, numbering 35% of respondents from that sector.