Grace Barney
English 102
Professor Montoya
31 July 2025
Can music make depression worse?
In today’s world suicide is a major concern. Worldwide healthcare organizations have estimated over 800,000 people die by suicide each year. The age group being 15–29-year-olds in particularly. During that age period is a time when music affects us the most. There have been studies showing that adolescents listen to around 2-3 hours of music every day. Professionals have found that music is the main cause of Suicide for several adolescents. Sandra Garrido state’s “For example, in 2007 two teens in Melbourne committed suicide after months of posts on a social media site that documented their fascination with emo music along with their downward trajectory of negative thinking. (Garrido)
Now many people can go their whole lives and not have sad or angry music affect them negatively. In fact, they use it to decompress, and it can help them overcome a traumatic experience or a breakup. But with depression what people find hope, strength, and guidance people who struggle with depression find sadness, hopelessness, and it does not want to make them want to change their lives, it makes them feel suicidal, unwanted, and hopeless.
Garrido state’s “We conducted experiments in which we asked people to listen to a self-selected piece of music that made them sad and another that made them happy. We then measured their response to the music. We found that rather than feeling better after listening to sad music, people with high scores in rumination reported feeling more depressed. Rumination is the tendency to become stuck in patterns of negative thinking and to find it difficult to shake negative thoughts about events or one’s feelings. It usually goes hand-in-hand with depression. Our research shows that when people are ruminators, listening to sad music seems to perpetuate these cycles of negative thinking, often prompting sad memories and negative thoughts. For example, a person who has had a recent break-up might listen to Adele’s Someone Like You, have a good cry, and then walk away feeling better, focusing on thoughts of moving on and becoming stronger through their experiences. A person with a tendency to depression, however, might listen to the same song but focus on thoughts of how love never works out for them, or how they will never be able to fall in love with anyone else. Thus, instead of feeling better, their negative thought patterns are only deepened by listening to such a song.
For a healthy person this feeling is probably no more than a minor blip in their day and may even help them obtain some important psychological benefits along the way. For a person who is already severely, possibly clinically depressed, listening to music that makes you feel worse could be quite dangerous. On the other hand, when we then asked our participants to listen to a piece of music that they knew made them feel happy, even those with high levels of depression felt much better.” (Garrido)
Music in a way can manipulate our emotions in a way if we are not careful. For example, have you ever listened to a sad song, and you were hoping it would make you feel better, but it just made you feel even worse and then before and you just can’t shake off the gloom. That is one of the ways music takes over our emotions whether we like it or not. Neuro launch.com stataes “Lyrics, in particular, play a significant role in shaping our thought patterns. Just as Mitski’s music and mental health themes resonate deeply with her listeners, other artists’ words can embed themselves in our psyche, influencing our perspectives and self-talk. When these lyrics are consistently negative or promote harmful ideas, they can contribute to destructive thought patterns over time.” (Neuro Launch) patterns over time.” (Neuro Launch)
But music can also distract us from the things we need to get done. I have had times where I will be feeling sad and down, I just want something to listen to while I listen to homework but when I try to go do my homework, I have no motivation to actually go do the work. Instead, I procrastinate and wait till the last second to get my work done. Neruo Launch.com states “Research has shown that certain types of music, particularly those with lyrics or complex structures, can significantly impact our ability to focus and process information. It’s like trying to have a conversation in a noisy room – your brain has to work overtime to filter out the extra stimuli, potentially leading to mental fatigue and decreased productivity.
This cognitive disruption extends beyond just momentary distractions. Regular exposure to certain types of music while working or studying can lead to a decreased attention span over time. Our brains, constantly bombarded with auditory stimuli, may struggle to maintain focus on tasks that require sustained concentration.” (Neuro Launch. Com)
As children of the 21st century it is a good idea to sit down with yourself and reflect on your music, and how it can hurt their mental health. And I am not saying music is all bad, but I know for a fact that listening to bad music that all it talks about is suicide, drugs and immoral topics it will hurt your mental health. I have experienced it firsthand. I used to listen to songs that had sad messages, and a huge wave of depression ingulfed me for two whole years so as a reminder don't listen to sad, mad angry music if you are already struggling mentally. “Rumination is assessed using multi-item questionnaires such as the Response Styles Questionnaire (RSQ). Studies indicate that high rumination scores predict higher future depressive symptoms and major depressive episodes in child and adolescent samples. In 2022, researchers studied the eight musical emotion mechanisms highlighted in the Brain Stem: Reflex, Rhythmic Entrainment, Evaluative Conditioning, Contagion, Visual Imagery, Episodic Memory, Musical Expectancy, and Aesthetic Judgement (BRECVEMA). In a sample of young adults, according to Larwood, it showed an increase in sadness among those who listened to a self-nominated sad song. Moreover, individuals with higher levels of rumination had greater increases in sadness and were more likely to experience musical entrainment and select songs with associated memories while experiencing emotional contagion. This means that adolescents who are experiencing symptoms of depression may intentionally select music that can induce rumination which can exacerbate mood symptoms” (Manningchildrens.org)
Sage journal states. “Could listening to music that makes people sad or the engagement in maladaptive listening strategies result in, or at least be a mirror of, clinical symptoms of depression? Depression is a mental disorder that affects the regulation of mood and emotion, i.e., affect (Davidson et al., 2002). According to the World Health Organization; (2020) International classification of diseases for mortality and morbidity statistics (11th revision.; ICD-11), depression is part of mood disorders (Reed et al., 2019).
The symptoms of depression are composed of three clusters. The affective cluster (AC) is marked by emotional and mood related symptoms that include feelings of worthlessness, excessive or inappropriate guilt, and recurrent thoughts of death or suicide. It also includes primary symptoms, such as depressive mood and diminished interest in activities or loss of pleasure. The somatic cluster (SC) is marked by somatic symptoms such as reduced energy or fatigue and changes in appetite or sleep. The cognitive cluster (CC) comprises cognitive symptoms such as difficulty in concentrating or indecisiveness, hopelessness, psychomotor agitation or retardation (Gaebel et al., 2017; Malhi & Mann, 2018; Reed et al., 2019; Stein et al., 2020).
To identify depression in individuals, five out of nine symptoms must be present, including the compulsory presence of one or two primary symptoms, present over two weeks (11th ed.; ICD-11). The prevalence of symptoms of depression varies between cultures. In Indians, somatic symptoms such as feeling tired, fatigue, physical pain, and anhedonia are the most commonly reported symptoms of depression (Grover et al., 2013; Poongothai et al., 2009).” (Sage journal)
From what I have read music does in fact effect depression, and we need to spread awareness around the world to help prevent people from choosing death over life because one song. We as a community can bring a stop to immoral music and help others when they are struggling.
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