Mental illness issues on musicians are a recurrent particularity in the musical industry,

many musicians have to deal day to day with many stressful situations by themselves,
without some type of emotional support or psychological guidance to get over their stress or
anxiety. All this added to the constant worry of not having a stable financial future. The
highly competitive industry and the aspects of making music your living comes with a
tremendous mental burden and mental problems has become a frequent situation, especially
on professional performing musicians who are daily dealing with critics and opinions about
their playing, they are expected to play perfectly in every one of their performances.

Despite the fact of the recurrent cases of mental illness in musicians there is not
enough awareness about this situation and not talking about the problem aggravates it, this
contributed to musicians developing mental illness over the years and many of them do not
realize about their own mental problems and abnormal behavior.
This is not a surprising result due to another interesting situation which has been
romanticized for a long time, it is about the figure or common model of the “misunderstood
artist”. Almost any famous historical figure, whether it is in music, poetry, art or cinema, has
been associated with the phrase “There is no genius without a touch of madness”. At this
point many musicians may think mental illness is just a normal outcome of their job because
that is how it was for their greatest figures.

It is a priority to attack a problem that has been normalized and even romanticized
throughout history, the best way to start is always from the root or cause of the disease and it
all starts from when you start learning an instrument. Music conservatories and music
academies are places where future musicians are born, that is the perfect place to start, but
how?. To eradicate and generate consciousness upon something that is so normal for
musicians, efficient psychological monitoring and prophylaxis in conservatories and musical
academies is needed. Given that these cases develop since the beginning of the musical
trajectory (while learning music) psychological monitoring may prevent the problem from the
root and this should give proper and strong emotional tools to musicians facing stressful and
anxious situations, this way we prevent mental related illness from occurring in musicians.

To sum, unawareness about mental illness in the musical industry has resulted in a
significant increase of insanity in musicians. The amount of anxiety musicians deal with in
their daily life has contributed to musicians developing mental illness over the years, this
means a huge emotional burden for all of them. Treatment through psychological monitoring
and prophylaxis in conservatories and musical academies is a priority and a possible efficient
way to eradicate this problem from its root and to prevent mental problems to occur. It is time
to act so we can have great artistic minds around us more time!.