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Noisey

Why We Need to Do More Than Talk About Mental Health in Music

A letter from our Noisey UK editor on how, for this year's Mental Health Awareness Week, we want to get practical.

It's odd how swiftly things can change. As we've already said on this very site, there's been a transformation in the ways both the press and general public try to understand mental health in the music industry. Well, maybe only if you're feeling optimistic. Just ten years since Britney's much-sensationalised emotional breakdown, it would be beyond ignorant to mock her today as the tabloids did then, rather than empathise with her mental health struggles. You could say the same of East 17's Brian Harvey or Sinead O'Connor in recent years, whose ill health is often also laid bare in public on social media. But this isn't a fringe issue. While we seem to forget this statistic every time it does the rounds, one in four people in the UK have been diagnosed with a mental illness.

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In music, it's even more pronounced. In November 2016, you may have read about renowned charity Help Musicians UK highlighting research that showed how often musicians self-report living with anxiety and depression. In comparison with that one if four stat for the general public, researchers Sally Anne Gross and Dr George Musgrave found that of 2,200 people surveyed who work in music, nearly three out of four reported to have suffered from anxiety and more than two-thirds with depression.

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