Juan David Ladino Cardenas

Professor Deby Jizi

UWIRT1103-036
October 25, 2015
Double Entry Journal
Citation: All quotes are taken from the Conclusion section of Music and Suicidality: A
Quantitative Review and Extension, a peer reviewed article written by Steven Stack PhD, David
Lester PhD and Jonathan S. Rosenberg BA, and published in 2012.
Source: Quote (Paragraph #)

Responses

While there have been over 130 investigations to date

I would agree. This was inherently visible

on media effects on suicidality, the vast majority have

during my research. Scholarly work pertaining

been concerned with news reports and, to a lesser

extent, with film. In contrast, the link between music

to this specific topic is limited in its scope and

and suicide has received less attention, and no

tends to focus more on other media or the

systematic review of the literature exists on the

musicians themselves.

subject (1).
In a similar vein, Young et al. (2006) explored a
relatively unstudied suicidogenic culture, Goth culture,

Well, most obviously. This pertains to grunge

music and much of pop as well. When your

and found that Goths are 16 times more apt to have

attempted suicide than others. In addition, they

entire genre some sense of community and

measured the degree of identification with the music

truth speaks to the unfeeling masses you can

culture, and found that the higher the degree of

only ever expect them to follow suite.

identification, the higher the risk of suicide attempts

(6).
All findings on the influence of music on suicide
ideation and suicide acceptability that were based on

This is interesting, although I would have to

argue on the side of that it isnt necessarily

experimental research designs were insignificant.

Students exposed to suicide songs were not

music that provokes suicide rather than an

significantly higher in suicidality than those exposed to

nonsuicide songs (7).

existing issue that perpetuates a fascination

with suicide which results in the popularity of
suicide songs.

This does not mean that suicide songs are, indeed,

less dangerous to triggering actual suicides overall,

Agreed. The point that is lost, I think, is that

the music is a reflection of the culture itself.

but the main thrust of danger may be the genre itself.

Currently, Goth and Emo fans, for example, may be at
higher risk of suicide given personal and cultural
tendencies toward hopelessness (8).
It is important to take into account mediators of links
between music and suicide. For example,

I think this right here is responsible for the

vast majority of the issues arising with

membership in several musical subcultures was

associated with low involvement in organized religion,

problem music. They represent a deviation

an involvement thought to protect against suicidality

from religion, which although not necessarily

(9).

a bad thing, is what kept some semblance of

order and balance in some peoples lives.

Many music-based subcultures with suicidal

tendencies are small and are often working class

I would argue that a problem of bias occurs in

that not all fans of a particular type of music

oriented (Definis-Gojanovic, Gugic, & Sutlovic,

2009; Young et al., 2006). As such, there may not be

would consider themselves members of a

enough members for a meaningful analysis in the

particular subculture. And so the problem

typical samples based on 80 to 200 students (10).

becomes that ascertaining a correlation

between music and suicidal tendencies tends
to be underreported. Another factor one might
consider is the fact that people struggling with
suicidal ideation are less likely to seek out
help than those not. This translates into an

unwillingness to answer survey questions and

such.
Research at the individual level could be improved by
adopting new measures of the degree of fanship in a

This again speaks to the issue regarding

collection of data for this particular topic,

music subculture. For example, one might use the

number of hours spent listening to a musical genre or

although the proposed method for determining

the number of concerts attended. An Internet-based

musical fanship might circumvent some of the

study determined that the self-identified heavy metal

issues encountered in traditional sampling.

fans attended, on average, 16 concerts a year, but

there was a large disparity among the fans with a
standard deviation of 19 concerts (Recours et al.,
2009) (12).
In a similar fashion, the degree of exposure to
suicidogenic songs could be measured by content

This is of no surprise as it correlates strongly

with the lyrical content and popularity of

analyses of the favorite song/artist of

respondents. Primark, Douglas, Fine, and Dalton

certain Nirvana songs, such as Polly, wherein

(2009) have developed a methodology for estimating

Kurt Cobain describes the rape of a girl

the amount of exposure to degrading sexual lyrics

named Polly form the first person point of

based on the favorite artist of the respondent. Such

exposure is a significant predictor of a range of actual

view of the rapist. In many musical genres,

self-reported sexual behaviors in youth (13).

there exists a fairly strong correlation between

general depressiveness and sexual frustration.
Tove Los lyricism is self-depreciating
bordering on self-loathing.