Life Experiences to Lyrics: What Mental Health Looks Like in Music

Authors

• Ashley Salinas, St. Mary's University
• Ashley de la Fuente, St. Mary's University

Files

Contributor

Pierucci, Jillian (Faculty mentor)

Digital Publisher

Digital Commons at St. Mary's University

Publication Date

Spring 2026

Keywords

Mental Health, Music, Life experiences, Human emotions, Lyrics

Description

● Music conveys human emotion and mental states, often reflecting societal struggles such as depression and anxiety. Lyrics often shape how listeners experience these emotions, influencing mood, identity formation, and emotional processing in young adults (Gustavson, 2021; Chen, 2023). ● Depression, characterized by persistent sadness, loss of interest, and withdrawal is frequently expressed in music through explicit descriptions or metaphorical language (Shriram, 2015). Whereas, anxiety involves excessive worry, restlessness, and hypervigilance, is less studied yet similarly present in music (Kim, 2023). ● Previous studies have highlighted that pop lyrics often emphasize relational uncertainty, country songs depict fear of loss, and rap lyrics highlight stress from systemic pressures (Kresovich, 2020). ● This study analyzed lyrical content in three music genres (breakup-pop, rap, and country) to examine how depression and anxiety symptoms are portrayed.

Format

pdf

Size

1 poster

City

San Antonio, Texas

Creative Commons License

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-No Derivative Works 4.0 International License.