Doctors should ask their teenage patients what type of music they prefer to determine if they are at risk of developing a mental illness or committing suicide, researchers say, according to The Sydney Morning Herald's article.
A study, published in Australasian Psychiatry journal, found that teens who listen to pop music are more likely to be struggling with their sexuality, those tuning in to rap or heavy metal could be having unprotected sex and drink-driving, and those who favour jazz are usually misfits and loners, prompting a call for doctors to include musical tastes as a diagnostic indicator in mental health assessments.
"There is no evidence to suggest that the type of music you listen to will cause you to commit suicide, but those who are vulnerable and at risk of committing suicide may be listening to certain types of music," the author of the study, Felicity Baker, said yesterday.
She said an Australian study of year 10 students had shown significant associations between heavy metal music and suicide ideation, depression, delinquency and drug-taking, while an American study had also shown that young adults who regularly listened to heavy metal had a higher preoccupation with suicide and higher levels of depression than their peers.
Deliberate self-harm and attempted suicide was also associated with teenagers who listened to trance, techno, heavy metal and medieval music as part of the goth subculture, while those who attended dance parties were much more likely than their peers to be taking drugs.
Some genres of rap music, such as French rap, were linked to more deviant behaviours including theft, violence and drug use, while teens listening to hip-hop were usually less troublesome, Dr Baker said.
Michael Bowden, a child psychiatrist and the head of medical programs at the NSW Institute of Psychiatry, said most doctors already questioned teen patients about their influences from peers, the internet and music.
"The key to understanding any teenager is to treat them with respect by listening to what they have to say, rather than typecasting them according to the type of music they listen to," he said.
Source?
...teens who listen to pop music are more likely to be struggling with their sexuality, those tuning in to rap or heavy metal could be having unprotected sex and drink-driving, and those who favour jazz are usually misfits and loners...
My view of their study shows this: Teens struggle with sexuality, and might also tend to listen to popular music. Many feel like misfits and loners and might also tend to like jazz. And the sort of person who has unprotected sex and drives drunk might decide he/she likes rap or heavy metal music.
You can't point at one side of a coin and say it determines what the other side of the coin is; it's just that coins have sides. I doubt many people realize how invalid any judgement of anyone is at all, let alone based on their musical tastes. All this does is make parents feel like they have to restrict what kind of music their kids listen to, in order to keep them from becoming suicidal homosexual loners. The resulting shitty relationship between parent and child then influences the child to become a suicidal loner struggling with their sexuality.
I wish people would just stop trying to manipulate life's odds, it always balances itself out in the most ironic ways.
Brian Molko is a good example of what you are saying. His parents restricted him so he adopted an androgynous image in retaliation. One consequence of this action was the formation of a decent band, Placebo.
So that makes me a bisexual suicidal nerd? Actually not too far off the mark.
...I listen to jazz and I'm so much of a loner it's not funny.
I'm a metal head, and a 21-year old virgin... Though I do drink quite a bit, but I'm smart enough not to go driving afterword.
The only link I have with music is whenever I hear happy-hardcore dance I want to break things.
i love jazz, i'm a loner but that doesn't make me a k-loser
Country music has the highest incidence of suicide
I listen to industrial and noise, I'm a depressed suicidal loner.
I listen to Baroque music, it's awesome and my only mental problem is that I'm an excessive perfectionist. Woo
I listen to everything.
But I suspect I might have some form of schyzophrenia.
what happened to the study linking smart kids with listening to metal?
Seriously.
Just fucking piss off with such bullshit surveys.
You think asking 100 (or even 1000) people is enough to make it reliable?
This pseudo-science-bullshit of moderntimes is getting on my nerves.
(p.s.: Physics Student here)
>>14
Fuck. It's nice to see another Physics student say this.
>Some genres of rap music, such as French rap, were linked to more deviant behaviours including theft, violence and drug use, while teens listening to hip-hop were usually less troublesome, Dr Baker said.
French influence is ruining the world.