Music and Mental Illness

Hello everyone,

I've been trying to look out for depictions of mental illness in music. I asked ChatGPT and the response was a bit underwhelming. There is always speculation and sometimes confirmed facts about composers with mental illness, which is interesting to consider, but not precisely what I am trying to find.

Does anyone have any recommendations for this sort of stuff?

Context: I am trying (and have already written) solo piano pieces trying to capture the essence of various mental illnesses. Genre doesn't really matter. I found some more popular pop-like music that moreso deals with people's lived experience of mental illness. I mean that's cool too, sort of getting warmer. But mostly looking for music attempting describing the illness through the music (not necessarily through the lyrics), if that makes sense. Things like depression/bipolar/ADHD/anxiety/schizophrenia/addictions etc.

Hopefully someone can recommend something, thanks in advance :)

I am not familiar with examples in any genre of music that deals specifically with this subject - and it's sort of a difficult topic too. I myself have mental illness and wrote my Andante for Strings while I was developing Schizophrenia.

Schizophrenia is a terrible illness, but of course many people recover and do very well and function very well. I hope your health is good.

I am actually writing a piano piece about Schizophrenia at the moment, which is about 90% completed. I will try to share it on this website when it's done.

Your Andante sounds really good :)

Mental illness is absolutely a difficult topic, so my hope is that by using music, there are some things that can be communicated that words cannot.

23 hours ago, Grant Weep said:

Schizophrenia is a terrible illness, but of course many people recover and do very well and function very well. I hope your health is good.

. . .

Your Andante sounds really good :)

Thank you :-)

23 hours ago, Grant Weep said:

Mental illness is absolutely a difficult topic, so my hope is that by using music, there are some things that can be communicated that words cannot.

I think it's appropriate to mention another composer on this forum who might have some depictions of mental illness in music considering that it's in his name - @BipolarComposer .