Songs that Saved my Life

March 11, 2004 11:39 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

All this week, BBC digital music station 6Music have been running a campaign about the links between mental health issues and music. called 'Songs that Saved My Life'.

There have been items on various different shows during the week, covering issues such as the emotional impact of music, interviews with a range of musical artists about how their music and performance has been affected by their state of mind and mood induction experiments live online. Listeners have been invited to vote for their top 'Song that Saved my Life'.

This evening, Tom Robinson's Evening Sequence featured a discussion with music journalist Patrick Humphries and yours truly, talking about the tortured artist in music. You can listen to the programme between now and next thursday on the Evening Sequence webpage (click on 'Listen to Thursday's Programme')

Update, 18/3/04: Unfortunately, you can no longer listen to the programme on the BBC website as they only keep recordings for 1 week. But links to mental health resources and helpline details are still available.

I did quite a bit of research before the programme and wanted to mention a few of really good resources I came up with.

Firstly, I wanted to get up to date on the links between drug use and mental health, as I guess this is a bit issue for some musicians. The SANE website has an excellent article clearly describing the links between various street and prescribed drugs and mental health. New Scientist also has a clear and thorough summary of the research around cannabis and psychosis.

Secondly, I found a good article by Kay Redfield Jamison, reprinted from Scientific American, concerning the controversial subject of the links between creativity and manic depression (bipolar disorder).

Finally, I should mention that the 6Music website haslinks to some general mental health resources which might be useful.