Today is the last day of Suicide Prevention Month, and here at Scene Fever, we want to talk about the ways pop culture meets us inside feelings we may not always know how to name.
There are feelings we learn to hide long before we learn how to explain them. Sometimes admitting that we are in a dark place feels more frightening than the struggle itself. We worry that we will become a burden, make the people we love uncomfortable, or be treated differently once the words leave our mouths. So we search for other ways to say them. For me, media has always been one of those ways.
I love good production and the occasional shallow pop banger as much as anyone, but lyrics are what make me truly connect to a song. Moving lyrics can take a feeling I have been carrying alone and place it directly in front of me. They can make something confusing feel understandable or something unbearable feel, at the very least, shared.
Movies can do something similar. There is something beautiful and powerful about being vulnerable through art, and about the way a story can connect us to the human experience. Sometimes seeing something so dark on screen is the only way we can visualize it and truly grasp the gravity of what someone might be going through.
When I was at my lowest, music did everything for me. Sometimes it allowed me to drown in my thoughts. Sometimes it helped me release feelings I did not know how to communicate. Sometimes a darker song simply made me feel less alone in being a person capable of having dark thoughts. Other times, music gave me enough strength to keep going.
I have struggled with suicidal ideation for most of my life, and I have been hospitalized because of my mental health. I also know what it is like to lose people because of their own battles with mental illness. I know both the experience of needing a reason to stay and the grief that remains when somebody you love does not.
I do not share that because I want those experiences to define me. I share it because silence allows shame to grow, and honest conversations can make it easier for someone else to speak before they reach their breaking point. Sometimes a song or a movie begins that conversation before we are ready to begin it ourselves.
We often discuss art and mental health as if only openly uplifting stories can be helpful. We build playlists full of motivational anthems and watch movies that promise everything will eventually be okay. Those stories matter. I know firsthand that they can matter immensely. But they are not the only stories that matter.
Some art does not pull us out of the darkness. It enters it with us. Girl, Interrupted, The Perks of Being a Wallflower, All the Bright Places, The Virgin Suicides, and Dead Poets Society all bring us close to difficult feelings and experiences. Charlie in The Perks of Being a Wallflower has always stuck with me, as has Neil in Dead Poets Society. Seeing someone else’s struggle made visible can change your perspective. It can remind you that you are not the only person who has felt this way, even when you have felt completely alone.
Songs can do that, too. “Adam’s Song” by blink-182 is one of my favorite songs ever because of its ability to be both uncomfortable and beautiful. It does not avoid the reality of suicidal thoughts, isolation, and regret. Instead, it gives those feelings somewhere to exist without trying to immediately soften or explain them away. Its beauty does not come from pretending the darkness is not there. It comes from looking directly at it. That honesty is important.
Songs such as “Better Off Dead” by Sleeping With Sirens, “Numb” and “What I’ve Done” by Linkin Park, and so many of the emo songs people dismiss as excessively “dark” or “dramatic” can give painful emotions somewhere to go. They can scream what we have been trying to swallow. They can say the uncomfortable thing first when we do not have the language, courage, or energy to say it ourselves.
Listening to dark music or watching a difficult movie is not always about wanting to remain miserable. Sometimes it is about needing to feel something completely before you can move through it. Sometimes you need to cry, scream, sit in your anger, or admit that you are not okay. Healing should never require us to sanitize what hurting actually feels like.
A song or a movie does not have to save your life to matter. Sometimes it only has to make the next three minutes feel survivable. Sometimes we need both kinds of stories within the same playlist, the same movie night, or even the same hour.
Taylor Swift’s “Forever Winter” approaches that darkness from the perspective of someone desperately wishing a person they love could understand how much their life matters. Lucy Dacus’s “Please Stay” and Noah Kahan’s “Call Your Mom” carry a similar urgency. These songs do not pretend that one perfect sentence can fix everything. They simply ask someone to remain here, moment by moment and reason by reason.
Sometimes we need someone else to hold hope for us until we are able to hold it ourselves. Music and movies can give that hope a voice we can return to as many times as we need. They can also give the people who love us a way to better understand what we have been feeling, and a place to begin connecting with us.
It may have seemed corny to some people at the time, but Logic’s “1-800-273-8255,” featuring Alessia Cara and Khalid, showed how meaningful it can be when an artist speaks about suicide directly while connecting listeners with help. Named after the former number of the National Suicide Prevention Lifeline, the song moves from crisis toward the desire to live.
A study published in The BMJ found that periods of intense public attention surrounding the song were associated with 9,915 additional calls to the Lifeline and fewer suicides than expected. One song cannot solve the suicide crisis, but responsible art and honest conversation can move people toward support.
I think I love heartbreak stories almost as much as love stories because both allow us to appreciate what it means to have loved at all. Heartbreak, grief, and joy are not completely separate experiences. Grief can only exist where something mattered. A heartbreak song or movie can be devastating and still contain evidence that love, connection, and beauty existed.
The world is full of so much evil and darkness, but it is also full of an overwhelming amount of good. Music and movies help me recognize the beauty in both without demanding that I choose only one.
That complexity matters when we talk about suicide prevention. Preventing suicide is not as simple as telling someone to think positively or reminding them that life is beautiful. A person can know that beauty exists and still be in unimaginable pain. They need room to be honest about that pain without being judged, dismissed, or immediately treated like a problem someone else needs to make disappear. Art can open that room, but we have to be willing to continue the conversation.
Ask your friends how they are doing, then create enough space for them to answer honestly. Listen without rushing to make their feelings smaller. Check again tomorrow, even if they told you they were fine today. Learn to recognize when somebody needs more help than you can provide, and remind them that seeking professional or emergency support is not an inconvenience or a failure. Most importantly, do not wait for someone’s pain to become a tragedy before deciding that it was serious.
Suicide Prevention Month gives us a reason to bring attention to these conversations, but people struggle during every month. The compassion, honesty, and willingness to check on one another cannot disappear when September ends.
Music and movies have helped me survive feelings I once believed would consume me. They have helped me grieve people I wish were still here. They have let me drown in a thought, release it, understand it, and sometimes find enough strength to keep going.
Art is not a replacement for therapy, medication, hospitalization, crisis intervention, or community. It cannot carry the full responsibility of keeping someone alive. But it can give us language. It can make us feel recognized. It can begin a conversation that desperately needs to happen.
If you are struggling with suicidal thoughts or emotional distress in the United States, call or text 988, or chat at 988lifeline.org. The 988 Suicide & Crisis Lifeline provides free, confidential support 24 hours a day. You do not have to wait until it feels “bad enough” to ask for help. (988lifeline.org)