- Nov 8, 2010
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Are musicians more suceptable to mental issues?
- Thread starter Icey101
- Start date
It does seem that way, but then I only know from my own experience... My emotional state tends to be all over the place depending on how my career is looking - if I play a good gig, if someone I respect compliments my playing, if get a well-paying gig, if I do well in an exam I'm bouncing off the walls for weeks. Recently I've not been getting enough work and an upcoming audition isn't looking so hopeful, I'm worried about not being able to maintain a career in music so I've been a right old misery lately. I suppose its just added stress when you're self-employed and struggling. Although I suppose you can get the same stress in any work...
Also, it's the rock and roll life! It's cool to drink and take drugs until you've gone slightly mad, right?
Also, it's the rock and roll life! It's cool to drink and take drugs until you've gone slightly mad, right?
It seems possible that musicians have less of a safety net, due to lower income and lack of health care, and are thus more likely to show noticeable effects of mental illness.
Go out and read "Touched with Fire: Manic-Depressive Illness and the Artistic Temperament" by Kay Redfield Jamison.
I know musicians that play professionally and that come from very broken up families and they're stable and positive minded guys. On the other hand my brother and I know each other for late night calls full of anxiety and not giving a **** anymore about anything and even tears and stuff like that. It's been a while now, but generally my brother and I have serious issues with being a 'member' of this thing called society. It's just a massive machine to me really, with little to no interest in music or art. It has given me a job to pay the bills and I'm honestly grateful for that, but it is really a system of illusion and putting people to sleep without them even noticing it. Catch my drift? See what I'm doing here - this stuff I write just comes out naturally and it buzzes around in my head all day. I guess some people think more than they should and/or are less shielded against day to day routine life and its zoo-like display mankind. Wait, I'm in tears now! 
In the real world I don't see any evidence of that among my musical colleagues. But in these forums (not just TB) there seems to be a surprising number of nut cases. Wonder why that is ... 
I know musicians that play professionally and that come from very broken up families and they're stable and positive minded guys. On the other hand my brother and I know each other for late night calls full of anxiety and not giving a **** anymore about anything and even tears and stuff like that. It's been a while now, but generally my brother and I have serious issues with being a 'member' of this thing called society. It's just a massive machine to me really, with little to no interest in music or art. It has given me a job to pay the bills and I'm honestly grateful for that, but it is really a system of illusion and putting people to sleep without them even noticing it. Catch my drift? See what I'm doing here - this stuff I write just comes out naturally and it buzzes around in my head all day. I guess some people think more than they should and/or are less shielded against day to day routine life and its zoo-like display mankind. Wait, I'm in tears now!
Imo, it's not just society, but life itself that's an illusion. The only thing that separates people from lower animals is our ability to question. We don't have the smarts though to get to the answers beyond the superficial, material stuff. That's the challenge of being human. Music helps to ease the pain of that dilemma and can help folks to see the brighter, more positive side of the picture. So maybe people who are into music also have a greater propensity towards other venues that may appear to offer solace? Could very well be.
Music eases pain for a lot of people. Music is even used in therapy. Music is an energy if you will. It's a matter of applying it. In the end I think musicians are no more suceptible to mental disorder than people who don't even care about the cheapest music in the world. I've even worked with guys who had a family, a BIG house, a well paid job, animals and just about everything you want, and you know what?, some of them were really depressed, but I mean really Depressed. The flipside is that I have a couple of friends who are in their late thirties and still haven't landed an ongoing decent job and still live in students houses and with their moms and still don't know what they want to do, and they get their hard times aswell, but they have a knowing I rarely do see in the mainstream suited up company career hunting people I work with - it ain't a reference, but as you stated: the illusion of 'life' and that what is ingrained by relentless impression into our brainscreen is in fact an illusion. I don't know if i'd be happier dying as a hobo or as Hugh Hefner, maybe there's not even a difference. You get born naked and you die naked, and all things you have and wear in between is all just in between and counts for naught in the end. Who knows what will happen when the time comes for us to go to the next place? We don't know, we've asked ourselves this question sometimes through our lives, at least once or twice, and hence the dillema I guess, if at least you care for it. You can't reason it out, your mind won't let you to, your mind will fool you in the end. It happens to me, and I reason too much than is good for me - I'm getting stupider all the time. Fact is that MANY people are suffering and a lot of us trip over that fine edge of 'sanity' and have to take pills to stick to the 'good' side of the fence. And all the while the machine keeps rolling farther down the road.
Maybe it's getting into music and opening your tentacles to suck in all that tone and vibe that allows you to suck in more than you wanted in the end. I believe that one is able to shut down his receptors or set them open by will. A musician, at some point, HAS to open his receptors to get intoxicated with music, and that can take some musicians to a point where they become more and more intertwined with the primal emotions of music itself and thus, in some way I don't yet understand, have their receptors (oh damn this stupid word!) wide open and don't close them anymore. Maybe this all is BS to you guys, but I like the mental exercise of thinking this up. Still, in the end it's just a thought.
If you've read through this, thanks, and I'm Belgian, so sue me!
this is a well-trodden issue. my only observation is that men tend to divert or externalize their emotional troubles rather than talk them through... and music is a popular way to do this, these days.
and an effective one IMO. i mean no one wants to hear about your boring trauma, but i don't mind listening to your gig. at least it'll be over and done with in 30 mins or so.
and an effective one IMO. i mean no one wants to hear about your boring trauma, but i don't mind listening to your gig. at least it'll be over and done with in 30 mins or so.
+1. I don't know about anyone else, but I've been bipolar a lot longer than I've been a musician. That, and unipolar depression have roots in brain chemistry that manifest very early in life. Quite a bit different from drug addiction, which could come about later in life due to any number of external or internal influences.
There needs to be some clarification that we're talking about people who develop "mental issues" after becoming musicians, rather than people who were born with "mental issues" and eventually became musicians. Otherwise, you'd need an additional question for the latter: Are people with mental issues more susceptible to becoming musicians (or other kind of artist)?
Maybe you should broaden the question to a research, that will check if people that are born with mental issues, tend to take certain directions in their professional life, like becoming a musician/artist. Or if depressed people tend to take similar directions in life.
I've read about one neurological issue that may lead to a certain professional direction in 'primitive' cultures.
People that suffer from epilepsy in area's like rural Mongolia, more often become shamans because people believe they are in contact with the 'spirit world', which is seen as an advantage in that line of work.
I'm fine with society but on the flipside, I have serious issues with being a "member" of the arts and culture community. It just gets tiresome, being the only one around who doesn't hate Britney Spears, you know?
I heavily disagree. Society treats gifted artists like a superior race of people. No one cares of someone is good at math for example, but the guy who plays guitar well and contributes nothing else is going to get the attention.
More so than the math wiz, yeah. But the famous musician is the exception rather than the rule, as everybody knows. Just check you tube.
Interesting.....I know more non-musicians with major mental issues than "stable" musicians. I hate to say it but I have two good friends who work in a mental hospital and they pretty much said there is no hope for their patients. They just keep them drugged up to keep them calm.
If you haven't noticed (at least here in the US), there's a CVS/Walgreens on every corner with a 24 hr. prescription clinic. Why are we getting drugged up rather than dealing with our real issues.
If you haven't noticed (at least here in the US), there's a CVS/Walgreens on every corner with a 24 hr. prescription clinic. Why are we getting drugged up rather than dealing with our real issues.
