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On their 2015 breakthrough, Blurryface, Twenty One Pilots were the ultimate post-Spotify rock band, flickering wildly through ideas and genre: Tyler Joseph's vein-spilling emo rap, Josh Dun's funky-hard Travis Barker drums, tweaks of electronic music and reggae, twee ukulele indie, the grandeur of a Broadway musical and existential lyrics with a metatextual flair. Think a modern Sublime doing Terrence Malick's Tree of Life.

Most of those elements are still here on fifth album Trench, but they've coalesced into a smarter, more mature whole. Maybe TOP have grown as songwriters and arrangers, maybe some thanks to co-writer and co-producer Paul Meany (leader of psych-rocktronica band Mutemath), maybe it's the healthy coating of dubby, post-industrial reverb clouding up the record - but instead of emotive kids turning the radio dials, Trench has more of a cohesive sound and feel.

There's a convoluted Coheed & Cambria-esque storyline and some cryptic lore that Reddit posters are decoding, but the important thing is that the music is still about anxiety, depression and insecurities. It's hard not to imagine that a lot of this record - their first since Blurryface went triple platinum - is about a different type of "Stressed Out": the weight of fame. Opener "Jumpsuit" has the fuzzy blues swing of Black Keys and a sparkling Nine Inch Nails coda, where Joseph sings " I crumble underneath the weight/Pressures of a new place roll my way." "The Hype" - which the lyrics say he doesn't believe, by the way - is an alt-rock chant-along with a ukulele bridge. The lyrics to "Pet Cheetah" feels like a writer's block anthem where Joseph raps "I'm showing my faces in just enough places/I'm done with tip-toeing/I'll stay in my room/My house is the one where the vultures are perched on the roof." Even the love song, "Smithereens," second-guesses itself: "For you, I'd go write a slick song just to show you the world. ... For you, I know they think it's messed up to sell out for your girl."

"Neon Gravestones," ultimately, is the most intense look at fame, a song about how the media glorifies famous people after they die. Moody and reflective - think a Logic-style rap over Gary Jules' "Mad World" cover - Joseph offers an alternative: "Find your grandparents or someone of age/Pay some respects for the path that they paved/To life they were dedicated/Now that should be celebrated."

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Review: Twenty One Pilots Still Stressed, More Cohesive on 'Trench'

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On their 2015 breakthrough, Blurryface, Twenty One Pilots were the ultimate post-Spotify rock band, flickering wildly through ideas and genre: Tyler Joseph's vein-spilling emo rap, Josh Dun's funky-hard Travis Barker drums, tweaks of electronic music and reggae, twee ukulele indie, the grandeur of a Broadway musical and existential lyrics with a metatextual flair.

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When Twenty One Pilots frontman Tyler Joseph scrolls through his phone, there are hundreds of names in the contacts he doesn't quite recognize: kids from the band's hometown of Columbus, Ohio, who were the earliest fans of his two-man group, from back in the days when Joseph used to drive door-to-door hand-delivering tickets for club shows. When that grew too time-consuming, he and drummer Josh Dun would have fans meet them at a table outside the Chick-Fil-A in the Polaris mall's food court. On show days, Joseph's mom would stand outside the club and try to hawk tickets to passing Ohio State students. "She'd be like, 'Come see my son play music,'" recalls Joseph, who's 27 but could pass for a teenager, with a puppyish, Joseph Gordon-Levitt vibe that turns into something stranger and more intense onstage.

That was just four years ago. The duo's grassroots approach has, to their surprise, propelled them way, way beyond central Ohio. They are easily the biggest group to break out in the past year: In mid-January, Twenty One Pilots had a Top 10 single ("Stressed Out") and the country's Number Three album, lodged between Justin Bieber and One Direction. Weeks ago, they announced a 58-date arena tour, including two nearly sold-out shows at Madison Square Garden.

They're signed to the punk-leaning label Fueled by Ramen - launching pad for Fall Out Boy and Paramore - but Twenty One Pilots are one of the hardest-to-categorize hit acts in years, mixing angsty lyrics, Macklemore-style rhymes, Ben Folds-like piano pop, 311-ish reggae beats, hard-rock energy and the occasional ukulele ballad. Onstage, Joseph plays bass, piano and uke when he's not stalking around in smeared makeup and a bondage mask. Dun, a chilled-out former skater with an easy grin and gauges in his ears, helps them sound like a band, triggering prerecorded backing tracks as he plays. It's a seemingly odd combination that makes total sense to their teen fan base. "There was a lot of pressure to find a genre and stick to it," says Joseph. "People would tell me all the time, 'You can't be all things to everyone.' I would say, 'I'm not trying to be! I'm being what I want to be for myself.'"

Their current hit, the rap-rock throwback "Stressed Out," is about the harsh end of adolescence ("Used to dream of outer space, but now they're laughing at our face/Saying, 'Wake up, you need to make money'"). And backstage at The Tonight Show Starring Jimmy Fallon the week before Christmas, Joseph is doing his best to live like a kid again, gleefully flying down the quiet halls on his brand-new hoverboard, past uniformed NBC pages and frowning security guards. "How do I go forward?" he asks. "I just push my wiener out? I guess it just reads the ween!"

As showtime approaches, Joseph begins to transform, slathering black grease paint all over his neck and arms and trading his T-shirt and jeans for a stylish long black coat and dark pants. He stands up from the couch and begins pacing back and forth. "This makeup forces me to recognize what I'm trying to say on this stage with this song," he says. "I'm anxious to get up there and get this over with."

They play the album track "Heavydirtysoul": Like most songs on their newest album, Blurryface, it delves deep into Joseph's insecurities. "There's an infestation in my mind's imagination," he speed-raps. Fallon is sitting in darkness at his desk, but he's banging his head along to the beat; Questlove is also impressed, tweeting later in the day, "Whoa ... I wasn't ready!!!"

Joseph and Dun emerge from behind a red curtain into the Tonight Show hallway as Joseph's slim blond wife of nine months, Jenna, and members of their management team and road crew burst into applause. "Well," Joseph says, breathing heavily, "that was four minutes of hard work."

The name Twenty One Pilots is also a philosophy for Joseph and Dun: It came from an Arthur Miller play, All My Sons, that Joseph was reading at Ohio State, about a war contractor who knowingly sends off faulty airplane parts to Europe during World War II, afraid that he'd lose money if he fessed up to the mistake; the decision results in the death of 21 airplane pilots. It resonated with Joseph, who declined a basketball scholarship from Otterbein University to focus on music. "I could relate to the fact that making the right decision in life sometimes takes more work," says Joseph. "It takes more time, and it can feel like you're going backward."

To this day, Joseph and Dun will warn each other that they are "sending out the parts" if they feel they're taking the easy route. As the duo grew more popular, they turned down record deals with signing bonuses, acted as their own roadies long after they were selling out large venues, and refused to trade in their van for a touring bus. More recently, they've declined significant sponsorship offers for their 2016 tour.

Joseph and Dun were both raised in conservative, religious households. Joseph's father was the principal of a Christian high school that Tyler attended; before that, he was home-schooled by his mother. "I told her I wanted to be a basketball player, and she made me take 500 shots every single day in the backyard," he says. "If I got closer to the basket and made lay-ups, she didn't count them. She'd knock on the back window near the kitchen and point to the three-point line. I had to be done before dinner, and if I wasn't, I wasn't allowed to eat."

Things were even stricter at the Dun household. Video games and most rock or hip-hop albums were banned. "I'd hide albums like Green Day's Dookie under my bed," Dun says. "Sometimes they'd find them and get real mad. They'd find a Christian alternative, like Relient K, and make me listen to that." For a while, the only movies allowed in the house came from CleanFlicks, a Christian company that took Hollywood movies and edited out all the profanity, sexuality and violence. For a young Dun, it made watching movies like The Terminator quite confusing. "Some scenes they'd remove entirely," he says. "Watching those movies was an absolutely awful experience."

By the time he was a teenager, Dun was rebelling hard. "I just had this aggression," he says, noting that his parents nearly kicked him out when he was 14. "They almost sent me to a military school. They didn't know what to do with me, and I was always in detention. I never got into drugs or alcohol, but I would yell at my parents and just treat them terribly. Everything was an argument. Looking back, they were trying their best."

When his parents fell asleep, he'd break out his punk-pop CDs; eventually, they softened up on rock music, allowing him to assemble a drum kit in his basement piece by piece with his own money. He didn't go to college, moving in with a bunch of buddies instead and playing in local bands while scraping by working in the drum department of Guitar Center. "I was going nowhere," he says. "One day I said to my dad, 'Are you disappointed that I'm working a minimum-wage job and I didn't go to college?' I'll never forget his response. He said, 'It's not about how much money you make or what your job is, but it's more about your character. For that, I'm proud of you.' It gave me motivation."

Josh, I have a question for you," Joseph says. "Would you rather be attacked by 100 chicken-sized horses or one horse-sized chicken?" Dun gives the question (inspired by a popular Internet meme) some thought. "There's pros and cons to both," he says. "A horse-sized chicken will have short legs, so I don't know how fast it would be."

Joseph disagrees. "Take how fast a regular chicken is, and times it by however big a horse is. You want to take the 100 chicken-sized horses all day long. You just kick them right in the snout. Dude, just picture the beak on a horse-sized chicken. And he's not just roaming around. He's, like, honed in on you."

It's a freezing-cold afternoon in Ohio a couple of days before New Year's, and Joseph and Dun are walking around a nearly deserted downtown Columbus, not far from where they first met in 2010. Joseph had taught himself piano by playing along to Beatles and Dion songs on the radio, impressing friends with how quickly he learned, and forming an early version of Twenty One Pilots with two friends. Dun first saw them at a club on the Ohio State campus. "I loved everything about the show except for one thing: I wasn't onstage playing also," he says. It would be another year before Joseph's original drummer quit and Dun got the job, but they had become best friends in the meantime. By 2012, Joseph had grown into a ferocious performer, climbing the scaffolding and diving into audiences. The duo became the biggest band in central Ohio, putting every spare penny into the band and focusing intensely on their local fans. The most important Columbus promoter, Adam Vanchoff, took notice when they played the 1,700-seat Newport Music Hall. "I was like, 'These local guys just sold out the Newport?'" says Vanchoff. "Nationally touring bands can't do that!"

Right now, Joseph and Dun are enjoying their first month off since their major-label debut came out in early 2013. They've spent the time hanging out with their families and old friends, but they've also logged many hours working on complex backing tracks for their upcoming arena tour. "I know that concept gets a lot of flak," says Joseph of the tracks. "But we're so proud of them - we slave over them."

They head to Dun's parents' house; the drummer now lives in L.A. but crashes in his old bedroom when he's in Ohio, which is often. (Joseph and Jenna bought a house in Columbus and live there full-time.) They filmed much of the "Stressed Out" video at Dun's childhood home, so it's become a destination for Twenty One Pilots fans. Because the home number is listed, Dun says his parents have had to cancel the landline to put an end to the calls coming in at all hours.

A Christmas tree sits in the living room, next to a ceramic Nativity scene. There's not a single Twenty One Pilots photo or bit of memorabilia anywhere within sight, though the walls are covered with signs that say things like JOY and A LOVING FAMILY MINE TO TREASURE BETTER THAN WEALTH OF ANY MEASURE. Dun's basement bedroom has been stripped of most personal artifacts, but his decent-size DVD collection - which includes movies certain to be approved by CleanFlicks like Finding Nemo and The Truman Show - remains intact.

Dun takes out a bowl of two-day-old chili from the fridge, mixing in sour cream and cheese as the topic turns to his own religious views. "We're always questioning things," he says, "but I guess it's safe to say that we're both Christians." Dun's mother, Laura, a small, cheerful blond woman in her fifties, comes downstairs to say hello; she is a nurse, and his father is a physical therapist. "Hey, Mrs. Dun," Joseph says. "This is good chili. I promise to not spill any on the couch."

"Call me Mama Dun," she says. "I would have fixed you something more if I knew you were coming over."

Mama Dun appears in the "Stressed Out" video along with all the other members of the combined Joseph and Dun clans, who all chant "Wake up, you need to make money" in unison. "Growing up, money is important," says Joseph. "And now I have a career where I'm making enough money to live. But I really want to give it to my parents, my family, charities and people around me." True to form, Joseph still drives around town in a beat-up Chevy Impala. In the coming months, he says that the band plans to start its own charity, something "Columbus-based."

The rise of Twenty One Pilots also means that the band has stopped apologizing for its unorthodox mix of styles. The follow-up single to "Stressed Out" was "Lane Boy," a reggae-infused track that is almost a mission statement, with Joseph singing, "They say, 'Stay in your lane, boy'/But we go where we want to."

"It is true that if you hear our music described, it sounds unappealing," says Joseph as he gets ready to leave for his brother's high school basketball game. "I used to laugh and agree with people when they said it didn't make any sense.

"I'm going to stop saying that," he says. "It fits together into one body of work, because we made it."

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Twenty One Pilots: Inside 2015's Biggest Breakout Band

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When Twenty One Pilots frontman Tyler Joseph scrolls through his phone, there are hundreds of names in the contacts he doesn't quite recognize: kids from the band's hometown of Columbus, Ohio, who were the earliest fans of his two-man group, from back in the days when Joseph used to drive door-to-door hand-delivering tickets for club shows.

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They say it's not good to keep it bottled up, but is letting it out doing more harm than good?

Last week I wrote an article discussing punk rock and its impact on mental health, but what about pop music? Even 10 years ago, mental health was a new subject to discuss in music. Modern pop music songs are named after suicide hotlines and discuss finding yourself, as well as self-love. While these songs have encouraged mental health representation, they have also normalized feeling depressed, being unhappy and expecting the worst out of every situation.

This is not to say serious music cannot be great and helpful. I applaud bands like My Chemical Romance and rapper NF who open these discussions. Sadness has its place in music. However, I fear modern music and entertainment is guilty of fetishizing depression. Changing how we discuss mental health, personifying mental illness in characters and sad songs topping music charts have all changed the relationship between mental health and media.

The 2010s are commonly cited as the decade which changed how the media handles mental health. The suicide of Robin Williams struck people of all ages and was a cause for mourning across the country. Suicide has been treated as a dirty word - an ending only horribly sad people would ever participate in. But Williams was kind, funny, famous and his death caused many people to reanalyze how we discuss mental health.

Gregory Dalack, chair of the Michigan Medicine Department of Psychiatry and treasurer of the American Psychiatric Association said celebrity deaths "triggered greater awareness about the stigma around mental health and the importance of seeking help."

TV shows like "This Is Us" and "13 Reasons Why" also added to mental health discussions. Indirectly, movements like #MeToo also encouraged celebrities and the public to speak about mental health. As the change grew more and more, many notable figures came forward with stories of their own struggles.

So, what's the problem? Aren't singers supposed to sing about their experiences? Aren't shows supposed to tell new and interesting stories? Interesting is the key word here. Shows like "American Horror Story" portray mental illness as desirable, even helpful, in some cases. The protagonist, Violet, dies by suicide in the first season before she is "saved" by the dreamy, highly unstable, Tate.

Instead of growing from these emotions, the characters are assigned mental illnesses which are written off as a personality trait. These characters are not respected for their courage, but instead they are glamorized for being depressed, anxious or otherwise. Romanticizing mental illnesses has also bled into pop music.

Songs like "Broken" by lovelytheband look for depression in a relationship. In this song, expecting happiness isn't just naive, it's unrealistic. The song is set in an expensive party of trust fund kids wishing their lives away. This song is reminiscent of attitudes stereotypical of the teenaged population in films like "Less Than Zero" because it tries to make depression an aesthetic. "I like that you're broken, broken like me," the song says.

The song isn't protesting these emotions or asking for better treatment, in fact it is asking for the opposite. The singer is seeking out someone who is "broken" and later says everyone is already broken and because of this, his pessimism isn't concerning, but smart. The song continues its message: depression is romantic. "I like that you're lonely. Lonely like me. I could be lonely with you."

Studies have shown pop music is becoming sadder in a study from the University of California. This study analyzed 500,000 songs released from 1985-2015. Researchers studied the influences of these songs and their musical characteristics in order to determine the correlation in the popularity between varying songs. The study also found "a clear downward trend in 'happiness' and 'brightness' as well as a slight upward trend in 'sadness."

The researchers found that the use of positivity has declined over the years while indicators of loneliness and even social isolation have increased throughout the years. Lior Shamir at Lawrence Technical University studied lyrics and emotions in pop music. "You see a very consistent, very clear change that lyrics become angrier, more fearful, more sad and less joyful," Shamir said. "There are very substantial differences between lyrics in the late '50s compared with lyrics in 2015 and 2016."

These messages are confirmed in one of the most popular songs of 2015, "Stressed Out" by Twenty One Pilots. "Wish we could turn back time to the good old days. When our mama sang us to sleep but now we're stressed out." The song discusses the group's insecurities and their anxiety over making a living while being true to themselves.

Songs like "finding it hard to smile," by lovelytheband, "ghostin" by Ariana Grande, "1-800-273-8255" by Logic or almost anything by Billie Eilish adds to this study. According to "broken" by lovelytheband, "Life is not a love song that we like. We're all broken pieces floating by." Is this what love has become in modern media - falling for a school shooter and seeking out unhealthy people?

The reason I find this trend concerning is its normalization of being sad or expecting to be sad. "I've got issues you've got them too so give them all to me and I'll give mine to you," sings Julia Michaels in her hit song "Issues." There isn't a rousing chorus or a finalizing message to comfort fans. Sad music is fine, but a rising expectance of depression and anxiety have changed pop music and TV.

Mental health is a rising concern in media, but it is still one of the leading causes of death for teenagers. It seems to also be a rising concern in singers. Take Eilish's "Everything I Wanted" or "Listen Before I Go" which discusses her plans to end her life. "Sorry can't save me now. Sorry I don't know how," she sings. "Call my friends and tell them that I love them and I'll miss them but I'm not sorry."

The idea of "only having tonight" and being sad can be found on any pop station. But for some people this music carries the same message of The Smiths, Nirvana, Coldplay, Sia or Demi Lovato. It is not a takeover but a common trend returning to listeners speakers. Some listeners, like Claire Biddles, even find this music "self-indulgent."

"It's a kind of sadness you can handle and that actually lifts you up in some way," she says. "There's also a cathartic thrill in listening back to a song that you relied on during a break-up or whatever, and realizing how far you have come, but also connecting with the part of yourself that went through that pain or heartache."

After all, with every "broken" song there is Selena Gomez's "Lose You to Love Me," Justin Bieber's "Life Is Worth Living" and Lovato's "I Love Me." Discussing mental health doesn't mean only discussing anxiety or not wanting to live, sometimes it means finding a reason to live

"Time" by NF is an example of a pop song which discusses mental health and day-to-day struggles while reassuring listeners everything will be alright. It must also be taken into consideration that the age of a social media society has an even greater desire to know everything about a celebrity's life, from their morning routines to their perception of themselves and their lives.

Perhaps this is simply celebrities responding to that desire. There are also social implications of these changes. Rising cultures of "sad girls" can be seen on Tumblr and in most Lana Del Ray songs, which shows that this shift in culture is also affecting young people. Is the rise in sad music a cause for questions, or is it another impact of social media and discussing mental health in media?

"I don't wanna be alive. I just wanna die today," Logic sang at the 2017 MTV Video Music Awards. Behind him written in white letters was "1-800-273-8255" - the name of his song and the name of a suicide prevention hotline. Logic shared the dance stage with suicide survivors as he responded to his own song with a message of hope. The second verse is to comfort the other person in his song, "You don't gotta die, I want you to be alive."

Sometimes music must be sad, even painful, to say what the song truly means. "I don't wanna cry anymore," Logic sang. "I wanna feel alive. I don't even wanna die anymore." Mental health discussions are not always perfect, but an important step in these discussions is acknowledging they are real. As the introducer and singer, Kesha, said, "The truth is piercing and the truth is what matters. The truth is none of us are alone."

While I don't think it is helpful to romanticize depression, I believe these discussions are integral to the success of our society. Sometimes that means discussing vulnerable subjects. After all, what is music without emotion? What do you think? Has pop music become too harmful and pessimistic, or is it helping listeners express themselves?

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Rose Younglove, University of Michigan, Ann Arbor

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Is Pop Music Tackling Mental Health, or Just Fetishizing Depression?

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They say it's not good to keep it bottled up, but is letting it out doing more harm than good? Last week I wrote an article discussing punk rock and its impact on mental health, but what about pop music? Even 10 years ago, mental health was a new subject to discuss in music.

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In 2009, Anders Osborne found himself at rock bottom. He was bankrupt, his house was in foreclosure, his wife had kicked him out, and he couldn't see his two young kids. His livelihood was playing gigs, but he couldn't even do that - he'd often show up too drunk or high to perform. "For close to a year, I'd [either] try to find a friend's couch to sleep on [or] I lived in the park," says Osborne, a New Orleans-based singer-songwriter who's collaborated with everyone from Phil Lesh to Tim McGraw. "I ruined everything."

Osborne, then 42, was eight years into his latest struggle with substance abuse and mental illness, which manifested in psychotic episodes and hallucinations. "The bipolar tendencies, like staying up for days and days, flourished in my addiction," he says. "I'd make these dramatic changes from, like, Tuesday night to Wednesday morning, and before you know it, I'm hitchhiking somewhere in the middle of nowhere."

Osborne's story isn't new. Every generation has its share of musicians - from Charlie Parker and Janis Joplin to Kurt Cobain and Amy Winehouse - who've battled addiction and mental illness. (The two are closely linked; according to national data, about half of people who suffer from mental illness will also experience substance abuse during their lives.)

Lately, it's become clear that the number of artists suffering is staggeringly high. In a 2018 study from the Music Industry Research Association, 50 percent of musicians reported battling symptoms of depression, compared with less than 25 percent of the general adult population. Nearly 12 percent reported having suicidal thoughts - nearly four times the general population. According to a 2019 study published by Swedish digital-distribution platform Record Union, the numbers are even starker: It found that 73 percent of independent musicians have battled stress, anxiety, and depression.

As album sales continue to fall and record labels and digital distributors gobble up the majority of streaming revenue, artists essentially have no choice but to tour more and more. "We've hit a tipping point where the people who work in our industry - artists as well as crew - are commodities," says Warped Tour founder Kevin Lyman, a professor at the University of Southern California's music school and a longtime mental-health advocate. "People are working twice as hard to stay in the same spot they used to. The pressures are ratcheted up."

Aside from financial instability, all kinds of stressors accompany this literal gig economy: loneliness; being surrounded by drugs and alcohol; strain on relationships; poor sleeping and eating habits; lack of access to quality health insurance and care, and so on. "Creatives in the industry today suffer more because their routines are so destabilized," says Dr. Chayim Newman, a Toronto-based clinical psychologist whose private practice focuses on performers and touring artists. "The intense, long hours on the road or in the studio create a challenge in maintaining health routines and healthy relationship routines." Or, as Osborne puts it, "it's the perfect collision" for a breakdown.

While top-tier musicians aren't immune to these problems, they tend not to be the ones hardest hit, at least when it comes to financial and health-care issues. "For every artist that stands onstage, there are 10 to 100 crew members invisible to the public who make that performance, tour, or album run," says Newman. "Those crew members all burn out in the same way [as the artist]."

There may even be neurological reasons why so many artists struggle with mental health. "Centers in the limbic system that control negative emotion tend to be more heavily [located] in the right side of the brain," says Newman. Translation: "Right-brained" people - like artists, who can more easily tap into their feelings - "tend to have dominance in the side of the brain that creates more negative emotions," he says. "We might even say there's a predisposition for [that]."

What's more, performing can throw an artist's bodily systems out of whack. "With the pressure and rush of the stage, artists are in this ramped-up sympathetic-activation mode," says Newman. "It almost looks like the equivalent of a panic state, except it's being induced by voluntary circumstances."

In the past few years, these problems have played out in striking and tragic terms. In 2019 alone, Silver Jews' David Berman, guitarist Neal Casal, Yonder Mountain String Band founder Jeff Austin, and Prodigy singer Keith Flint all died by suicide. In the two years prior, rapper Mac Miller suffered an accidental drug overdose, and superstar DJ Avicii, Soundgarden's Chris Cornell and Linkin Park's Chester Bennington all died by suicide.

Now, the music industry is taking action like never before to address the growing mental-health crisis. There are new initiatives popping up from both corporate giants and grassroots organizations; festivals and benefits being planned to raise awareness of mental health; and efforts by record labels and artists to destigmatize mental illness. Musicians from Bruce Springsteen and Justin Bieber to Lizzo and Demi Lovato are increasingly opening up about their own mental-health struggles.

The idea of providing support to artists has been around for decades - the Recording Academy launched MusiCares to lend medical and financial help back in 1989 - but recently, the number of resources for musicians in need exploded. "We've lost so many artists that [industry leaders] are finally paying attention," says Lyman. "They're realizing, 'We can't have all our artists die.' "

Hilary Gleason was friends with both Austin, who died in June, and Casal, who died two months later. "Both were seemingly doing really well in their careers and playing these huge shows," she says. "It's a silent killer." Gleason is the CEO of Level, a consulting firm that connects bands with nonprofits. The day after Casal died, her phone started blowing up with calls from despondent friends and clients. "They said, 'This is so messed up,' " she recalls. "'What are we going to do?' "

Her answer: Organize a conference call with what she calls the "music-industry mental-health task force," more than 40 music-industry vets, including promoter Pete Shapiro, plus musicians, tour managers, and crew members. "We had a conversation around, 'Let's see what initiatives are out there and what the gaps are and where we can throw our support behind,'" says Gleason. "All of us in music understand that it's both the best thing that ever happened to us and the hardest life we could've signed up for."

Out of that call grew Backline, an organization dedicated to connecting musicians and anyone in their orbit - from roadies and sound engineers to agents and family members - with mental-health resources. (Newman is on the clinical advisory team.) Gleason announced the initiative in early October; 70 submissions came in that month. "We've had agents and managers say, 'I'm experiencing so much anxiety because of my never-ending email inbox and booking for [all these] bands, and I think it should all be great, but I feel this crushing weight,' " she says.

Backline acts as a clearinghouse for long-running mental-health resources like MusiCares, Sweet Relief Musicians Fund (founded in 1993 to help artists pay for living expenses), and HAAM (which has been helping Austin-based musicians access affordable health care for 15 years). "There was no central hub for all these places to coexist," says Backline's clinical director, Zack Borer, a licensed therapist and musician himself. "We're trying to bring all the existing organizations out of their silos, where people can see all the things happening."

Backline's case managers have a one-on-one conversation with everyone who submits a form on its website, then pairs individuals with the appropriate resources - be it a therapist, life coach, support group, or AA meeting. Backline's services are free. "The discourse around mental health is changing," says Borer. "It's not just sex, drugs, and rock & roll anymore. It's how sex, drugs, and rock & roll can have a long-term impact."

Live Nation announced it was backing a new nonprofit called Aside from Backline, a slew of music-focused initiatives launched in the fall. On October 10th - World Mental Health Day - Tour Support, which gives artists, crew members, and vendors on a given tour 24/7 access to a therapist via phone or online. (Vicky Cornell, Chris' widow, is a partner, and artists from John Legend to My Morning Jacket have endorsed the organization.) Live Nation also recently funded an industry guide to mental-health best practices published by the Music Industry Therapist Collective. "With more artists touring than ever before, it's increasingly important to consider the challenges that artists, crews, and vendors face while on the road for long periods of time," says Live Nation CEO Michael Rapino. "It's inspiring to see major industry players step up to tackle some of those issues."

Trade associations and performance-rights organizations also joined the cause . In October, the Association for Electronic Music released a mental-health guide for people working in the electronic-music industry. It explains how to identify conditions like depression, burnout, and imposter syndrome, and goes deep on coping strategies for managers and artists, who tend to tour heavily.

In December, the American Society of Composers, Authors and Publishers (ASCAP) debuted a wellness program called TuneUp in response to a survey that found musicians are 31 percent more likely than the general population to say their health and wellness majorly impact their careers. ASCAP will launch recovery-support groups in several cities and online, plus offer discounts to its 725,000 members on fitness, nutrition, and mindfulness services. (First up in 2020: a group meditation in New York.)

At least one record label has caught on to the shift. Last February, Toronto-based indie Royal Mountain Records announced that every act on its roster would get a $1,500 stipend for mental-health-related services. Borer has seen a jump in the number of inquiries from managers and label executives looking to provide support to their artists, but would like to see more from major labels. "With every additional death or overdose, the industry is being confronted with the growing problem of depression and anxiety within the business," says Borer. "Ultimately, it depends on whether they want to invest in providing clinical support."

Artists are also doing their part to destigmatize mental illness. There are many examples, but in 2019 alone, Sully Erna of Godsmack debuted the Scars Foundation, a nonprofit dedicated to mental-health education; veteran jam band Widespread Panic held a ticket raffle that brought in $100,000 for a suicide-prevention organization called Nuci's Space; and Billie Eilish starred in a PSA to share her battles with depression and urge those who are struggling to ask for help.

On the event side, multiple festivals designed to raise awareness of mental-health issues are in the works. On May 9th in Los Angeles, Lyman is producing 320 Fest, an event he created with Talinda Bennington, Chester's widow. (Touring giant AEG and Warner Records are also partners.) It will feature free daytime performances by musicians and comedians (the lineup is TBD) and panel discussions - including one moderated by Bennington - on mental health and addiction. The festival will culminate in a benefit concert at the Microsoft Theater. No acts have been confirmed as of press time, but the talent will be "A-List," Lyman says. "I believe if people have a good time they're more willing to learn."

In New York, plans are underway for Sound Min d, a mental-health benefit concert that debuted last year in Brooklyn. Passion Pit and Aimee Mann are in talks to appear. There's also Recovery Fest in Nashville, an event dedicated to increasing attention around mental illness and addiction, slated for fall 2020. "The more we talk about mental health, the more normal it is," says Gleason. "Increasing transparency can lead to more willingness to get help. It's a tide that needed to come in."

Despite the industry's new attempts to address the mental-health dilemma, Newman, the clinical psychologist, says it's only scratching the surface of what needs to be done. "Every little bit definitely counts - if a program helps prevent a single suicide, it was an unmitigated success," he says. "But what often happens in cases like this is as soon as there's an awakening around an issue, it's like, 'Let's find a Band-Aid.' But the goal isn't to provide solutions - it's to provide solutions that work."

I n a few weeks, Newman is launching his own initiative: TourHealth.org, the first-ever major research study on mental health in the touring industry. The goal is to gather data on the mental-health problems that artists and crew members face (the survey will be sent to about 10,000 industry members worldwide) and use it for scientific research on the most effective interventions. "The only way to provide solutions that work is that everything has to be empirically based," says Newman. "We're trying to get to the roots of the key issues that pop up, and then we can begin to test and develop solutions. If we make sure people get the right care, I think there can be a major impact."

In the meantime, Newman says he's hopeful companies like Live Nation can usher in industrywide changes on the mental-health front. (He'd like to see tour routes plotted with more breaks, and venues and festivals designed to be more "nurturing" to the mental-health needs of artists and crew members.) "We're just starting to understand what the issues are," he says. "We're just at the beginning of being able to get our finger into the dam to stem the flood."

Osborne, for one, is doing his part to hold back the surge. A decade ago, when his life was falling apart, a few musician friends - among them Dr. John and Ivan Neville - coordinated with MusiCares to arrange a bed for him at a California rehab center. "That's when the new chapter started," Osborne says, adding that he got his house back, he's reunited with his wife, and his career is back on track. (He released his latest album, Buddha & the Blues , in 2019.) This month, he'll celebrate 11 years of sobriety.

Osborne decided to pay his good fortune forward, in 2017 starting a nonprofit called Send Me a Friend. The organization, which supplies sober buddies to recovering artists on tour, has a network of 3,500 volunteers in 50 states, and has helped more than 100 musicians since it launched. ("Friends" are recovering addicts too - they must have at least one year of sobriety under their belts to participate.)

Osborne was inspired to start SMAF after going back to work in the early days of sobriety. "You come back from the total bottom and you're supposed to be sharp enough to do a gig where everyone is drinking and doing drugs," he says. With his program, artists (or crew members, or managers, or anyone who has a role in the music world) would have a hand on tour. "You're accountable for those two to four hours," says Osborne. "You have a space that feels safe and solid."

He says that if an organization like his had been around when he was struggling, he would have gotten help sooner. "If there would've been less tip-toeing and avoidance, and people were straight-up understanding" of mental illness and substance abuse, he says, things may have been different.

But thanks to the efforts of Osborne and others like him, artists today have a better shot at avoiding the live-fast-die-young cliche that's plagued so many before them. "Layne Staley, Scott Weiland, Chris Cornell ... we lost so many people," says Lyman, who worked with the frontmen of Alice in Chains, Stone Temple Pilots, and Soundgarden, respectively, as a stage manager for Lollapalooza in the early 1990s. (Staley and Weiland both died after accidental drug overdoses.) "That whole era of our legacy bands is gone. We can't lose another generation."

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'We Can't Have All Our Artists Die': How the Music Industry Is Fighting the Mental-Health Crisis

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In 2009, Anders Osborne found himself at rock bottom. He was bankrupt, his house was in foreclosure, his wife had kicked him out, and he couldn't see his two young kids. His livelihood was playing gigs, but he couldn't even do that - he'd often show up too drunk or high to perform.

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ast January, East 17 singer Brian Harvey posted a video online. Filmed in a brick-walled alleyway, it showed the musician smashing up his own platinum discs before delivering a short explanation to the camera: "That's what I think of your fucking music industry." Harvey, it emerged, had reached a point of despair with a business that had offered him no care and no financial or psychological support. Despite having sold 18m records, he now struggled to heat his home, suffered from long-term depression and frequently contemplated killing himself.

Historically, there has been a near-fetishisation of the relationship between mental illness and creativity, as if one might feed the other, as if Oscar Levant's assertion that "there's a fine line between genius and insanity" was true. What's notable about the coverage of mental illness in the music industry in 2015, however, is how profoundly normalised its portrayal has been. Harvey's video marked the beginning of a year in which the industry's approach to mental illness seemed to shift; musicians began discussing problems with a striking candour and readiness. From Pete Doherty's anxiety attacks before Libertines shows and Ezra Furman's songs about mental precariousness to Florence Welch's public account of depression, there has been no flaming glamour to these tales, only straight-talking stories of the distress and the drudgery of mental turmoil.

The industry's new openness on this topic is, arguably, reflective of society's broader willingness to discuss such issues. Personal stories about mental health problems by public figures such as Ruby Wax, Kerry Katona, Paul Gascoigne and Stephen Fry, have done much to spark discussions over the last few years. Professor Green's BBC3 documentary explored the subject of men and mental health. In it, the British rapper talked openly not only about his own depression, but also about his father's suicide and what leads so many young men to kill themselves each year.The unusual nature of a musician's working life may make them more vulnerable to mental illness. Last year, a survey by the charity Help Musicians UK reported that 60% of professional musicians had experienced mental health problems. The charity noted that the common demands of the job - including anti-social hours, loneliness, worries about money and the strain placed on relationships by frequent touring - can create a breeding-ground for psychological issues.

Last March, Kendrick Lamar discussed his own experience of this strange climate in an interview with MTV, explaining how, during the recording of To Pimp a Butterfly he had suicidal thoughts. The combination of a life now spent largely on the road, feted as a hip-hop legend and remembering his beginnings in Compton (where many of his friends and family still reside and struggle to get by), conjured up what he described as "survivor's guilt". "This is how an artist deteriorates," he said.

That unsettling no-man's land in the life of a musician - somewhere between the demands and trappings of a normal existence and the distorting realm of success - was also addressed in the documentary Cobain: Montage of Heck, released last spring. In it, we saw how Nirvana frontman Kurt Cobain struggled with being in the biggest band in the world while also dealing with new fatherhood, a volatile relationship and drug addiction.

It would be naive to overlook the music industry's acceptance of drugs and alcohol in the narrative of many musicians' mental health struggles. Drugs played a role in the breakdown of dubstep producer Benga, who spoke in October about how he was sectioned and diagnosed with both bipolar disorder and schizophrenia, brought on, he said, by drug use and the demands of touring. Talking openly about mental health issues was, he said, at odds with the image of free-wheeling escapism offered by the music world:

This industry is all about perception: a lot of people wouldn't want anybody to think they're weak, or that they can't do what they do, or that they're not cool. Nobody wants to come clean, let alone an artist.

Sometimes, even the psychological torment of an artist becomes so much part of their story, their songs and their image, that it also becomes part of the entertainment. In July, Asif Kapadia released the documentary Amy, in which the singer Amy Winehouse's mental and physical demise was presented with restraint and without sensationalism. It offered several perplexing thoughts: that we had become so caught up in the dark narrative of her songs - the blighted love, the drugs, the chaos, the notion of the mercurial genius - that when her demise became ever more brazen and distressing, we saw Winehouse not as an individual but as the butt of chat-show jokes and YouTube footage. By its close, one was left with a feeling of dismay and the sensation that no one had helped her.

And so we return to Brian Harvey, smashing platinum records in an alleyway in midwinter. Not a far cry, in many ways, to footage of Winehouse tottering about on stage in Belgrade, dazed, drunk and distressed. What do I have to do, the video screamed, to get someone to help me? The hope is that, with the music industry's new willingness to discuss mental health, support may not be quite so far away.

In the UK, the Samaritans can be contacted on 116 123. Calls are free and do not show on itemised phone bills. In the US, the National Suicide Prevention Hotline is 1-800-273-8255. In Australia, the crisis support service Lifeline is on 13 11 14. Hotlines in other countries can be found here.

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2015: when music destroyed mental health stigma

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ast January, East 17 singer Brian Harvey posted a video online. Filmed in a brick-walled alleyway, it showed the musician smashing up his own platinum discs before delivering a short explanation to the camera: "That's what I think of your fucking music industry."

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Twenty One Pilots have opened up about mental health issues in their music whilst also praising a "new generation of artists" who are openly using their music as a platform to explore ideas around mental health.

In a revealing new interview with NME, the band opened up about the conversation around mental health in music, saying a new generation of artists are helping to diffuse the stigma.

Frontman Tyler Joseph said: "I do think that our culture, when it comes to suicide and depression, has made leaps and bounds...I'm so proud that music has spearheaded the ability to talk about this so openly, and talking about it is so important.

"So in a sense I really feel like there's a big side of it that's been covered with 'let's talk about it, like, you're not insane there's nothing wrong with just you look how many other people go through this'."

He also talked about the dangerous fetishisation of the '27 Club' and how the band attempted to cover it in the Post Malone-like 'Neon Gravestones'. In the song, the band sing: "My opinion/Our culture can treat a loss/Like it's a win" and "I could give up and boost up my reputation/I could go out with a bang/They would know my name."

Speaking about the song, Joseph said: "I was afraid of that song...so that song is very black and white. I slaved over every pronoun. Because I knew that it was a sensitive topic, the last thing I needed was for someone to misunderstand what I was trying to say.

"I was afraid to not hide behind metaphor. I do understand there are risks in being misunderstood or misrepresented. There's an absolute chance to offend people or come off as dishonouring but I really wanted to focus on the people who are here to hear it. I wanted to point out something I would wanna hear when I'm going through these thoughts."

Joseph also discussed how the band tackled more mental health issues on 'Trench'. He said: "It's about using the art of storytelling to better understand a much less fantastical issue which is navigating your own psyche and giving it a destination and places you should and shouldn't go and characters you should avoid. And that can be found inside each person's struggle.

"It's interesting that 'Blurryface' - where I created a character that represents everything I didn't like about myself and everything I'm trying to overcome coincidentally happened to be the record that really broke through for us."

FOR HELP AND ADVICE ON MENTAL HEALTH:

He continued: "That we're forced to revisit it every night is a valuable lesson in your own personal insecurities: you work through it, you try to overcome it, but it's never something you can just fully cast aside and separate yourself from."

Twenty One Pilots recently announced the support act for their upcoming UK and European tour - you can see their scheduled lives dates for the UK and Ireland below.

March
1 - 3Arena - Dublin, Ireland
2 - SSE Arena Belfast - Belfast, UK
4 - The SSE Hydro Arena - Glasgow, UK
5 - Manchester Arena - Manchester, UK
7 - The SSE Arena, Wembley - London, UK
8 - The SSE Arena, Wembley - London, UK
9 - The SSE Arena, Wembley - London, UK

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Twenty One Pilots praise a 'new generation' of artists opening up about mental health through music

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Twenty One Pilots have opened up about mental health issues in their music whilst also praising a "new generation of artists" who are openly using their music as a platform to explore ideas around mental health.

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The rapper emerged from the Christian rap scene with Eminem-esque pop hits. Both he and YBN Cordae emphasize old-fashioned hip-hop values.

The Michigan rapper NF sounds agonized about his success on his new album, "The Search." Credit... Mario Anzuoni/Reuters

If the top of the Billboard Hot 100 this year has been deadeningly constant - Lil Nas X's "Old Town Road" has been No. 1 for 18 weeks - the rapid churn at the top of the album chart has told a rowdier and truer tale about what's happening in contemporary pop music.

So far, 24 different albums have been No. 1, none for more than two consecutive weeks. A No. 1 album these days indicates popularity, but also the power of release-week shenanigans: As major stars move toward short-notice album-drop strategies rather than extended rollout periods, they look for open windows that will all but ensure they'll debut at No. 1. ( Merchandise and ticket bundles frequently figure into the equation.)

Undoubtedly, then, Chance the Rapper was surprised to learn that his new album, "The Big Day," was bested by "The Search" by NF, a white rapper from Michigan who got his start in the world of Christian rap.

As a stand-alone event, it's not particularly meaningful: Chance is, broadly speaking, far more popular than NF. And yet an NF victory demonstrated roughly the same thing as a hypothetical Chance victory would have - a triumph for a certain style of intricate rapping, intermittently popular over the years but not particularly in vogue right now, and a certain moral value set that's also not terribly in style.

Both are artists at the margins of the dominant hip-hop discourses (online, the radio, and so on). They're extremely popular cult figures with passionate but somewhat narrow fan bases.

"The Search" is NF's second No. 1 LP. Credit... Universal Music

Judging by the tenor of the lyrics on "The Search," NF might prefer that things stay that way. Self-lacerating misery is his sole subject. His internal well-being is a bonfire, and fame seems only to be an accelerant.

In 2017, NF's third album, "Perception," went to No. 1, and its single "Let You Down" reached No. 12 and became a pop radio staple. Almost every song on "The Search" is about how the success he has experienced in the last few years has been disorienting and fraught.

It is alternately thrilling and draining, like trying to track individual bees in a swarm. As a rapper, NF is indefatigable, tongue-twisty and relentless - a clear inheritor of that other white rapper from Michigan, Eminem. NF's rhyme schemes are tightly clustered, he raps fast, and he is constantly vibrating between exasperated and agonized.

"Leave Me Alone" feels like a real-time reckoning with success that arrives too quickly: "Hide my plaques inside a closet, I just can't explain it/My wife, she tells me that she's proud and thinks that I should hang 'em/But I just leave them on the ground right next to my self-hatred." On "My Stress" he confesses, "I don't love my work the way I did" - who can relate?

There's precious little negative space on this sometimes vigorous, sometimes exhausting album; listening to it is a lot like living inside a snare drum during a marching band's halftime performance.

This is the Eminem in him. He has the polysyllabic rhymes down, and the self-laceration, too. But Eminem was a wild fantasist before he became a full-time solipsist; NF is seemingly only concerned with his own interior life.

When Eminem faded from ubiquity, the space he left in pop - where he gave high-level hip-hop technique its biggest platform - was far bigger than the hole he left in hip-hop, where even at his most famous, he was always a special-case oddity with few clear inheritors. Eminem remains a parent to the slapstick gore of early Odd Future, and his hyperdense rhyming is foundational to Logic and NF.

Back in the 1990s, this kind of rapping - the type that calls attention to its own flamboyance - used to be prized and rewarded. But in this era, it's more a curiosity, even if proponents like Chance and Kendrick Lamar excel at it. To rap with such force and gymnastic verve in this climate of psychedelia and melody feels like an ethical choice as much as an artistic one.

You hear it as well in YBN Cordae's debut album, "The Lost Boy," which debuted at No. 11 on the album chart, a little below the Chance/NF fray. Cordae, too, is a dexterous lyricist, an adherent to old-style values in the spirit of mid-to-late-1990s rappers from New York (and nearby) who were comfortable in the pocket and always eager to cram verses with different patterns of rhyme - the stuff of impressive radio freestyles.

YBN Cordae showcases a more diverse musical palate on "The Lost Boy." Credit... Stephen Maturen/Getty Images for Spotify

But his musical palette is far vaster than that of NF, who leans heavily on bruising, thudding production and choral singing so forceful it sounds like it's barking in your ear. Cordae prefers soul-drenched production, and on his interludes, he directly engages with gospel music. For him, too, being principled is both an aesthetic concern and a philosophical one.

In his limited interviews, NF has blanched at being called a Christian rapper, even though he emerged from that scene. And in a way, his protest is fair: He doesn't rap about God or salvation any more than most mainstream rappers. In NF's case, the classification is a kind of shorthand to exclude him from broader conversations about hip-hop, which he most assuredly belongs in. He's an objectively strong rapper who makes work with a moral valence - just like Cordae, just like Chance, just like Lamar or Logic or J. Cole.

Where NF falls short is that he mostly works in one gear. Part of the agonizing he does on "The Search" is about not being taken seriously enough - "Why the game looking at me like I'm just a tourist?" he raps on "No Excuses" - and emerging into the spotlight only to find that the value system you hold so dear is not in fact that widely admired. It explains how NF is both very popular and yet not that popular at all, and how both of those things are getting under his skin.

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NF Has the No. 1 Album in the Country, and He Sounds Miserable (Published 2019)

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The rapper emerged from the Christian rap scene with Eminem-esque pop hits. Both he and YBN Cordae emphasize old-fashioned hip-hop values. If the top of the Billboard Hot 100 this year has been deadeningly constant - Lil Nas X's "Old Town Road" has been No.

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A harsh article written by Rolling Stone, telling NF he isn't portraying his mental health right and constantly comparing him to Eminem

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The last week of July produced an inadvertent first-week sales clash between Chance the Rapper and NF, a Michigan rapper with a significant cult following. NF is orders of magnitude less famous than Chance, but that didn't stop his album from outselling Chance's wife-a-palooza by 22 thousand units. It was Christian rap's version of Kanye West's Graduation beating out 50 Cent's back in 2007.

In characterizing NF and , Chance offers a useful point of comparison. Like Chance, NF frequently raps about looking to God for strength and salvation. Like , harps on a single theme for 75 minutes. But the parallels end there. While Chance is an avatar of human joy, NF is an avatar of suffering. While Chance's music eagerly hops between genres, NF's production palette offers little beyond melodramatic, heavy-handed orchestral flourishes and cavernous reverb. His co-producer Tommee Proffitt has made music for TV shows like and , and it shows. No matter how much shrunk Chance's expansive worldview down to repetitive spousal kowtowing, the album isn't nearly as claustrophobic as , a dark echo chamber in which NF raps passionately and loudly in attempt to process the realization that fame and success have only exacerbated by his already-suffocating depression. In turn, he suffocates the listener; making your way through can feel like getting fitted for a straitjacket.

Stylistically, NF bears an uncanny resemblance to Eminem: the undulating cadences prone to blow like a volcano at any given syllable, the impulse to put pedal to metal and rap at top speed, the audacity to raid the thesaurus for words like "compliancy" in order to satisfy a rhyme scheme. They even wear the same hat . Yet, where Eminem's tendency towards the profane gives him dimension, NF's PG, swear-free raps flatten him. He is either a worse writer than he thinks he is, a bad editor, or both, because he dwells on his own misery so persistently and in such recursive language that his verbosity verges on word vomit. On "Leave Me Alone," he admits that his severe OCD prevents him from parsing insights from mundane observations: "I might take a normal thought and think it's so profound/ Ruminating, fill balloons up full of doubt/Do the same things, if I don't, I'm overwhelmed/Thoughts are pacing, they go 'round and 'round and 'round."

Despite all this, NF is increasingly difficult to ignore, and not just because of his chart success. He is a genuinely engaging artist who raps with impressive intensity and clarity, if not nuance. He confronts his incurable sadness head-on, and it's easy to identify with his mental health struggles. But for an album about depression, contains a noticeable lack of tension and interior texture. NF raps like Mike Shinoda and carries the burden of Chester Bennington. But where Linkin Park made depression feel impassably real and viscerally threatening, like a giant, jagged shard of ice, NF renders his demons as formless blobs (his go-to metaphor for depression is a bouquet of black balloons). Still, there are moments on that achieve the catharsis he seeks, soaring choruses like the ones on "Change" and "Time," where his mighty, swelling production washes over him and he gives himself enough space between syllables to breathe.

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NF's 'The Search' is a One-Note Depression Symphony

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The last week of July produced an inadvertent first-week sales clash between Chance the Rapper and NF, a Michigan rapper with a significant cult following. NF is orders of magnitude less famous than Chance, but that didn't stop his album from outselling Chance's wife-a-palooza by 22 thousand units.

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Music therapy involves using a person's responses and connections to music to encourage positive changes in mood and overall well-being. It can decrease anxiety and improve self-esteem.

Music has powerful effects on the mind. Different styles of music can have a significant effect on a person's mood very quickly, and it can help them experience and process a wide range of emotions, from happiness to excitement, as well as sadness, calmness, and thoughtfulness.

Making music can also be as beneficial as listening to music, and music therapy encourages people to actively create the music they find helpful to them.

This article explains what music therapy is, how it can help improve mental health, and its effects on different mental health conditions.

Music therapy uses the powerful abilities of music to improve a person's well-being. It is an alternative to other types of therapy, such as counseling or cognitive behavioral therapy (CBT).

Music therapists use a person's responses and connections to music to encourage positive changes in mood and overall mental mindset. Music therapy can include listening to music or creating music with instruments of all types. It may also involve singing or moving to music.

It can help improve confidence, communication skills, independence, self-awareness and awareness of others, and concentration and attention skills.

Live musical interaction between a person and their therapist is important during music therapy.

Improvisation can also be a key part of music therapy. This involves making music up on the spot in response to a mood or a theme, such as making the sound of a storm using drums and a rainstick.

The way that music affects the brain is very complex. All aspects of music - including pitch, tempo, and melody - are processed by different areas of the brain.

For instance, the cerebellum processes rhythm, the frontal lobes decode the emotional signals created by the music, and a small portion of the right temporal lobe helps understand pitch.

The reward center of the brain, called the nucleus accumbens, can even produce strong physical signs of pleasure, such as goosebumps, when it hears powerful music.

Music therapy can use these deep physical reactions the body has to music to help people with mental health conditions.

Music has been a part of human life for thousands of years. Specifically, experts have found instruments dating back to over 40,000 years ago, suggesting that humans' desire to express themselves or communicate through music is deep rooted.

The use of music for therapy and healing dates back to Ancient Greece, but its therapeutic use today began in the 20th century, after World War II had ended. The earliest reference to music therapy comes from a 1789 article called " Music physically considered."

The 1800s saw medical research into the therapeutic nature of music grow, and by the 1940s, universities were offering music therapy programs. E. Thayer Gaston, one of three men who pioneered the use of music as a therapeutic tool, had organized and promoted the practice so that it would become an accepted type of therapy.

Now, there are many music therapy associations around the world, and music therapists work in private care, education, and social care.

Music therapy does not rely on verbal communication, so it can be better for people who struggle to communicate verbally. This could be due to a disability, a neurodegenerative condition such as dementia, an acquired brain injury, or a mental health condition.

As CBT and counseling are both talking therapies, they may not be suitable for people who find verbal communication difficult. This is where music therapy can be beneficial.

Additionally, mental health practitioners can bring music therapy directly to a person, such as if they cannot get out of bed or are unable to get to a therapist's office. Enjoying music therapy at home can also benefit children who want to be in a familiar environment during their sessions.

This is not specific to music therapy, though, as many other types of psychotherapy can take place in the home.

The skills a person learns in music therapy can be useful in their everyday life, too. They may even take up learning an instrument as a new hobby, which they can use as a tool for improving their mental health and coping with difficult situations throughout their life.

There are extra benefits to listening or creating music that talking therapies may not be able to offer.

For instance, learning and practicing a piece of music can improve memory skills, coordination, reading, comprehension, and math skills, and it can also give lessons in responsibility and perseverance.

People can also enjoy a great sense of achievement from creating a piece of music, which can help improve their mood and self-esteem.

Music therapy can also introduce people to many different cultures, as clients can explore any type and genre of music during therapy. Understanding the history behind a piece of music can help people connect with the music they are hearing or playing.

Although self-expression is a part of talking therapy, music therapy allows people to express themselves in a creative way, which can be a more enjoyable way of exploring difficult emotions.

Lyric analysis is another accessible way for people to explore and process difficult emotions, experiences, or memories through music.

For example, a person can find themes and meanings within lyrics and offer alternative lyrics that apply to their life and experiences, which can help them find the words that represent how they are feeling if they are finding it hard to express this themselves.

Some of the documented benefits of music therapy include:

improved self-esteem

decreased anxiety

increased motivation

successful and safe emotional release

increased verbalization

stronger connections with other people

Many studies suggest that music therapy can reduce feelings of anxiety, including in people with , those undergoing surgery, and individuals going into intensive care units. Some studies also suggest that music can reduce blood pressure and the heartbeat, which can have a direct impact on how stressed a person feels.

There is also evidence to suggest that those undergoing music therapy experience reduced anxiety immediately after the session, which indicates that music therapy could be a convenient way to reduce symptoms quickly.

Music affects the amount of stress hormones, such as adrenaline and cortisol, that the body releases, and reducing these hormones can help relieve symptoms of anxiety.

Studies suggest that music therapy can improve symptoms of depression, with those undergoing music therapy along with standard treatments for depression - such as talking therapy - improving more than people who only received standard therapy.

Listening to music can also release dopamine, which is a hormone that makes people feel good, and endorphins, which are hormones that can induce happy moods and relieve pain.

Although music therapy is not a cure for depression, it can offer short-term benefits by improving mood and encouraging connection and self-expression.

Some of the benefits of music therapy for children include:

offering fun ways of expressing thoughts and feelings

practicing social interaction and communication skills

encouraging creative play

improving concentration and coordination

increasing self-awareness

increasing awareness of other people, particularly in group music sessions

building self-esteem and resilience

building language and listening skills

strengthening family relationships

Although music therapy is not a cure for any mental health condition, it can be an effective and enjoyable tool for reducing the symptoms of numerous conditions, including depression and anxiety.

Music therapy offers people a creative and accessible way of expressing their feelings and processing their experiences. People have used music for its powerful effects on mood and emotions for a long time.

Aside from helping with mental health conditions, music therapy also has numerous other benefits, such as providing a creative outlet, expanding knowledge and cultural awareness, and improving cognitive skills such as memory.

Read this article in Spanish.

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Music therapy: Types and benefits for anxiety, depression, and more

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Music therapy utilizes the power of music for the treatment of mental health conditions, such as depression and anxiety. Learn how it works here.

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nothing,nowhere. - clarity in kerosene (Official Music Video)