When mindfulness falters, hope may help

Many industries were impacted by the Covid-19 pandemic — including those that relied on in-person operations like leisure, hospitality, and the arts. In the US, 63% of artists experienced unemployment, 95% lost some of their income, and 37% were unable to afford food at some point during the pandemic; in the UK, the arts sector suffered a 60% decline in output. These figures represent a serious material, financial, and emotional challenge for artists.  

Writing in Stress & Health, a team from Clemson University and North Carolina State University look at how arts workers placed in this incredibly difficult situation developed their resilience. Through a series of interviews with those working in the music industry, they find evidence that while mindfulness was not a broadly effective way to get through to the other side of this intensely stressful period, another approach was: hope.

Participants were arts workers who had been connected with Musicares, a charity providing health and wellbeing services to music industry workers. They were interviewed twice: once in September 2021, when they were asked about their experiences between March 2020 and March 2021, and once in October 2021, which focused on their experiences since.

Although most participants' work had been seriously affected by the pandemic, almost half were employed in temporary roles, half were collaborating in projects weekly or more often, and others reported working in some capacity, even if unpaid (such as writing music or performing online). They were asked to think specifically about the work they were currently doing when responding to the team's measures, whether that was permanent, temporary, paid, or unpaid.

Participants indicated how often they engaged in mindfulness activities, hopeful thoughts, and how often they felt positive emotions in everyday life. Further questions probed resilience; for example, did participants see challenges as an opportunity to learn, rather than a setback? Participants then shared how engaged with and enthusiastic about their work they felt, how much their job was affecting their health, and finally, completed a distress tolerance scale which captured feelings of distress, and how well they felt they were coping with them.

Despite the fact that mindfulness is often presented as a way to manage distress, the team did not find that engaging in mindfulness had an impact on participants' ability to deal with the effects of the pandemic. Mindfulness had a negligible impact on work resilience, and in some cases was actually associated with increased tension at work. It also made no impact on engagement at work or ability to deal with distress.

As levels of hope increased, however, so did levels of resilience, as well as feelings of engagement with work. This relationship was moderated by positive feelings: when people experienced hope, they were also more likely to experience positive feelings on a day to day basis, likely contributing to their levels of resilience. These positive relationships were not seen across the board, however; levels of hope did not have a relationship to how stressed people felt at work, nor with their levels of distress.

The results do suggest that staying positive — particularly through trying to nurture hope and optimism — might be a significant contributor to emotional resilience. As the team notes, hope is considered to be something one can "practice and employ", rather than being a static characteristic that some people possess and others don't. Using it as a tool or tactic at times of great stress seems to provide reassurance that some other approaches fall short of; the authors believe this could provide both employers and workers with a new ways to approach the stresses of work-related hardships in extraordinary circumstances.

Read the paper in full:
Scott, K. L., Ferrise, E., Sheridan, S., & Zagenczyk, T. J. (2024). Work‐related resilience, engagement and wellbeing among music industry workers during the Covid‐19 pandemic: A multiwave model of mindfulness and hope. Stress and Health. https://doi.org/10.1002/smi.3466

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