Music Listening and Mental Ill Health: Experiences of Ongoing Emotional Distress and Trauma

Many people avoid music listening in the context of mental ill health because they are focused on safety and intuit that music is risky. Sometimes this is true, and music is not something to introduce if avoiding emotions is a priority. After all, there are many reasons why people might find music triggering which we will document in this chapter. Most directly, it can be an association between a piece of music and an adverse experience, as has been described in personal accounts (Johnson 2015). It might be a type of music that was played repetitively in the context of adversity, such as the violent parent’s preferred music in the conflict-ridden family home. This might be at the level of an individual song, an artist, or a whole genre of music. On the other hand it might be related to love lost, such as the triggering realisation that ‘They’re playing our song’ (Harris et al. 2020) after the experience of simple or complex grief and loss. It can also be less specific. Copycat suicides have been widely reported after an artist commits suicide (Stack 2009), and it is common to hear vulnerable people describe how affected they are by the media coverage of such losses.