News - Paper of the month
Popular music and the Papageno effect - experimental evidence for a beneficial impact of listening to songs with suicide-preventive messages
We have a new paper of the month!
Florian Arendt and colleagues conducted an RCT with 322 participants that showed that songs with explicit suicide-preventive messages reduced suicidal thoughts in the general population. Furthermore, even songs without explicit suicide-prevention messages contributed to reduction of suicide risk when listeners interpret the lyrics in a beneficial, coping-related direction, making concepts such as hope and overcoming a crisis salient in a given listener’s mind. These findings underline the potential of music with “Papageno narratives” for suicide prevention.
Reference for citation:
Arendt, F., Niederkrotenthaler, T., Wiedemann, I., & Till, B. (2025). Popular music and the Papageno effect: Experimental evidence for a beneficial impact of listening to songs with suicide-preventive messages. Death Studies. doi: 10.1080/07481187.2025.2585933.