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REVIEW article

Front. Public Health
Sec. Occupational Health and Safety
Volume 13 - 2025 | doi: 10.3389/fpubh.2025.1507772
This article is part of the Research Topic Multidimensional Approaches to Suicide Prevention: Innovations, Challenges, and Future Directions View all 5 articles

Musicians, the music industry, and suicide: Epidemiology, risk factors, and suggested prevention approaches

Provisionally accepted
George Musgrave George Musgrave 1*Dorian A. Lamis Dorian A. Lamis 2
  • 1 Goldsmiths University of London, London, United Kingdom
  • 2 School of Medicine, Emory University, Atlanta, Georgia, United States

The final, formatted version of the article will be published soon.

    Evidence suggests that popular musicians are an at-risk occupational group for suicide, with the deaths of famous musicians in the ‘27 Club’ reinforcing culturally powerful notions of musicianship and early mortality. This cross-disciplinary paper advances our understanding of the factors that may increase the risk for suicide among musicians and offers clinical recommendations around screening and prevention. First, we synthesise extant literature on suicide risk among musicians from around the world, including emerging evidence from Korea, and evaluate some of the methodological challenges presented in the analysis of suicide data on musicians. Second, given the lack of musician-specific forms of suicide prevention intervention, we draw on the Zero Suicide Framework and apply this schematic to musicians and the wider music industries, analysing the latest evidence on suicide screening, assessment, and prevention to develop best practices in this at-risk population. In doing so, we offer a comprehensive and clinically relevant overview of this most tragic of cultural affinities to improve strategies to prevent this devastating and all too frequent feature of musical life.

    Keywords: musicians, Occupational Health, Music industry, Suicide, Risk Assessment, prevention

    Received: 08 Oct 2024; Accepted: 10 Jan 2025.

    Copyright: © 2025 Musgrave and Lamis. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY). The use, distribution or reproduction in other forums is permitted, provided the original author(s) or licensor are credited and that the original publication in this journal is cited, in accordance with accepted academic practice. No use, distribution or reproduction is permitted which does not comply with these terms.

    * Correspondence: George Musgrave, Goldsmiths University of London, London, United Kingdom

    Disclaimer: All claims expressed in this article are solely those of the authors and do not necessarily represent those of their affiliated organizations, or those of the publisher, the editors and the reviewers. Any product that may be evaluated in this article or claim that may be made by its manufacturer is not guaranteed or endorsed by the publisher.