Music and suicidality: a quantitative review and extension

Area of Science:

• Psychology
• Musicology
• Public Health

Background:

• The relationship between music and suicidality is a complex and under-researched area.
• Previous studies have yielded mixed results regarding music's influence on suicidal ideation and behavior.

Purpose of the Study:

• To quantitatively review existing literature on music and suicidality.
• To identify factors influencing the reported association between music and suicide.
• To explore reasons for non-findings in experimental music suicidality research.

Main Methods:

• A quantitative review of 90 findings from 21 studies on music and suicidality.
• Multivariate logistic regression analysis to assess study characteristics and reported associations.
• Content analysis of suicide-themed songs versus non-suicide songs using Linguistic Inquiry and Word Count software.

Main Results:

• Ecological studies on suicide completions were 19.2 times more likely to report a link between music and suicide than other study types.
• More recent studies and those with larger sample sizes were more prone to reporting significant results.
• No experimental studies found a link between music and suicide ideation; content analysis revealed no significant differences in lyrical content (sadness, negative affect, death mentions) between suicide and non-suicide songs.

Conclusions:

• Ecologically based and recent studies, often employing superior methodologies, tend to demonstrate a linkage between music and suicidality.
• The lack of findings in experimental research may be explained by the absence of significant lyrical content differences in suicide songs.
• Future research should include experimental designs with control groups of songs from genres with low suicidogenic potential to further elucidate the music-suicidality relationship.