Introduction: Men’s well-being and suicide rates among men, particularly correlated with depression and divorce, are topics that have been taking growing interest over the last few decades. Scholars and activists alike have been researching the potential overarching causes and implications regarding the increasing number of completed suicides world-wide, of which men constitute an appalling majority.
Focus/Aims: Despite current, abundant mental healthcare services available, men tend to significantly underuse them when compared to women. Understanding why this happens, and how to make these services more appealing for men through music therapy to increase their usage and decrease the number of completed suicides among them –especially after divorce, is worth researching.
Methods: Journal articles, book chapters, and vodcast/podcast episodes were consulted using a PICO framework. The population is divorced adult men dealing with depression, and the intervention is music therapy compared with other interventions. Seven main topics were established for the inclusion/exclusion criteria: 1) adult men; 2) depression; 3) divorce; 4) men’s health 5) music therapy; 6) interventions for depression; and 7) suicide. Thus, the research topic ‘Music therapy and suicide prevention for divorced adult men dealing with depression’ was developed.
Results: Men in general report perceiving mental healthcare more tailor towards women, a compassionate discourse towards women’s mental health compared to a deficit-based discourse when addressing men´s mental health, and the men who face more gender-based discrimination are also the more at-risk population for suicide. On the other hand, men also show a tendency towards informal approaches for mental health, especially in group settings and oriented towards action, exercise, sports, crafts, and acquiring new skills. Considering the factors that influence the reported male underusage of current mental healthcare services, there is a possibility for strengths-based community music therapy to be of particular interest of men, who seemingly tend to prefer practical approaches that empower them through goal-oriented, community activities over standard psychotherapy models.
Conclusions: The present literature review sheds some light into a potential gap both in the literature and the practice. While there are some initiatives already, the development and implementation of more suicide prevention and intervention programs for men through music therapy is very much required.