It’s Mental Health Awareness Week, and I have been thinking about how mental health issues can play out in choirs (under normal circumstances). Not so much mental health benefits to choir members in general, but to what extent choirs can include the mentally ill without serious disruption.
Years ago I was in a choir with someone who was said to have a bipolar condition and who frequently criticised other sections in the choir (and by implication their individual members) out of the hearing of the conductor. This didn’t actually harm the choir’s performances, though it may have driven away some singers over the years. I didn’t feel able to send any friends to dep in the choir, as I wanted them to stay my friends!
In the same choir there was another singer with a drink problem, who was thrown out when it became too apparent in rehearsal. The first singer was critical of this decision, as (perhaps because of the part the choir played in their own life) they felt the other was only more likely to turn to drink without choir to hold them together.
I don’t know what I’d have done about these two if I’d been in charge of the choir. There is some sort of balance to be struck between artistic standards, social benefits for all and therapy for some. It was relevant in this case that there were teenagers (and younger!) in the choir. And it was large enough that the first singer couldn’t do too much harm, especially as no one else seemed to share their often-expressed views, so their behaviour was tolerated. You just had to develop a thick skin.
Turning to the present, the theme of the week this year is ‘kindness’. Somehow I feel things have gone badly wrong if we need to state the obvious in this way. Surely all members of a choir should feel welcome and wanted? Choir committees, which I wrote about recently, have a part to play, and I think much that I wrote here, in regard to the workplace, also applies in a choral context.