Advocacy & Collaboration Monthly Blog: “Remember You” Mental Health and Choral Music

What happens when a choral director and psychologist join forces? We get some awesome tips and tools for managing our mental health as choral music people! 

As part of the monthly Advocacy and Collaboration curated blog and podcast episodes, we’ve started this little mini-series on avoiding burnout thanks to feedback we are hearing from you.  The goal of these episodes is to provide our members and listeners with tools to avoid and overcome burnout – one of the leading causes of folks leaving our fabulous career. 

In this episode, “Directing Choral Music and Mental Health,” part one of two, you’ll hear from the Director of Choral Studies and Founder of ChorAmor.com, Dr. Troy Robertson. We talk about how to guard your time, explore what we really want in our lives and careers, and a couple of tools to help us all. 

Troy Robertson, PhD, is the Director of Choirs at Tarleton. He conducts Tarleton’s five choral ensembles, teaches conducting and choral methods, and supervises clinical teachers. He is also a composer whose works are published with Hinshaw Music, Santa Barbara Music Press, Colla Voce, and Music Spoke. His wife, Stephanie Robertson, PhD, is an Associate Professor of Psychology and Director of the Child Center for Wellbeing at Tarleton State University in Stephenville, Texas. She has worked in public schools, non-profit institutions, and higher education for over fifteen years, with a focus on the well-being and healthy development of children. She researches the impact of invisible disabilities and student access to education at secondary and post-secondary levels (you’ll hear from her on her own soon).

This conversation started because of an article from the October issue of Choral Journal online, titled “Remember You: Mental Health in a Life Dedicated to Choral Music.” To set up the podcast interview, the following is a portion of the introduction from the original article. Then jump over and catch more of an organic conversation with Dr. Robertson in this month’s A&C Podcast Interview on the Music (ed) Matters Podcast, Episode 173. 

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For many choral musicians, our profession is our primary identity. Our mental landscape is dominated by it. We, like artists and teachers in other vocations, repeat sayings that implicate the whole of our life, not merely part: “A calling, not a job,” “dark to dark,” “you don’t do it for the money.” When we reflect on our profession, it is with the lofty ambition to touch and change our singers’ lives as well as our own. The litany of activities this entails is well known: classroom teaching, ensembles, extracurricular ensembles, performances at night and on weekends, fundraisers.

For those of us who lead choirs in sacred spaces our work includes some of the most intimate moments in the lives of our choristers: new babies, weddings, sickness, funerals, moving into a new town, moving away from those we love, years and years of music and fellowship, rites and sacraments that cycle with the seasons of the year and the seasons of a life. How does this affect our mental health? In what ways do we face unique challenges, and how do we cope with such demands on our time and energy?

Moving Beyond Problem Admiration

To make meaningful changes, we must clearly identify the problem, but we must also move beyond discussing, defining, and considering the problem. The interventions described in this article are no substitute for clinical treatment. If you are struggling with mental health, the assistance of a counselor may be the best option. Types of therapists and additional resources are outlined at the end of this article. However, there are numerous interventions and applications that may be beneficial to put into practice independently.

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Learn more about the ACDA Advocacy and Collaboration Committee and their resources at ACDA.org/advocacy or follow A&C on Facebook and Instagram. Read the full article in the October 2021 issue of the Choral Journal. You can also listen to this episode on the Music (ed) Matters Podcast, Episode 173, anywhere you get your podcasts or watch the full interview on YouTube.