Music on the Mind
Okay, a quick and practical note, hopefully. I’ve stumbled upon the intersection of music and mental health earnestly. It comes up in real life but also prominently in psychiatry if you practice curiously. The recently separated and very depressed patient can have an unhealthy relationship with music. The problem isn’t the music, it’s the genre that typically accompanies this relationship.
Sad and tortured music certainly has a place somewhere in the depths of your Spotify app but as the saying goes, there is a time and place.
This is hardly a novel concept in my line of work. The links to cognitive behavioral therapy, the mainstay psychotherapeutic treatment for anxiety and depressive disorders, are obvious enough to a clinician.
But I do wonder how conscious the sub-clinically depressed are aware of this link. Music doesn’t typically come up without some urging or curiosity on my part for sicker patients. There is no music checklist diagnostic inventory and I don’t think I’ve ever discussed it with a consultant supervisor - not even the good ones.
Anyways, few things impact the vulnerable quite like music. There are those who claim not to like music, and more absurdly not to listen to it, sure, but they are liars. It calls to mind a claim my father once made - that he doesn’t dream. I give him the benefit of the doubt, but part of it always seemed suspect to me. Maybe it has to do with the dream recall, and not its actual existence. So you see, I can square those kinds of circles, but not the a-music creeping among us.
So, on to the practical. Here’s a crop of my recent listens. Spotify calls the playlist On Repeat. It should really be called Obsessional. I’ll leave you to ponder what kind of mood drug these songs act as in times of stress and strife.
-d
That’s Life by Frank Sinatra
Love Me Again by John Newman
Lose Yourself by Eminem
One by Mary J. Blige, U2
Miss Sarajevo by Passengers, Luciano Pavarotti
On To The Next One by JAY-Z, Swiss Beatz
Picture by Kid Rock and Sheryl Crow
Uptown Funk by Mark Ronson and Bruno Mars
Hung Up by Madonna
Stronger by Kanye West