#016 Psychotherapist on mental health, creativity, and whether geniuses are all mad: Denise Devenish

Music Not Diving is supported by AC55ID... head over to www.ac55id.com to check out the fastest growing electronic music marketplace, a central hub for music discovery, streaming and purchasing!

And for artists and labels... use the code Scuba6 for six months free use of the platform!! -- Watch the full video version of this episode over at youtube.com/@WeNotDiving

Denise Devenish is a psychotherapist who specialises in treating musicians, offering a specialist service for those working in music and the creative industries.

She describes herself as having grown up "in a family steeped in the music business and having been surrounded by musicians and industry folk my whole life" and having "witnessed first hand the unique highs and lows that working in the industry entails."

So of course this is an interesting person to talk to!

We discuss the extent of the mental health crisis in the creative industries (as well as the wider economy), the differences in the younger generation and their attitudes to drug and alcohol, the "art comes from pain" and "genius requires madness" tropes, and the changes that digital music has brought to participants in the industry.

The book we refer to is Can Music Make You Sick? by Sally Anne Gross and George Musgrave (aka Context). A key input into that is Jodi Dean's Communucative Capitalism (2005), which I also recommend.

This a really interesting discussion of some pertinent issues!

-- If you're into what we're doing here on the pod then you can support the show on Patreon! There are two tiers - "Solidarity" for $4 a month, which features the show without ads, regular bonus podcasts, and extra content. And "Musicality" which for a mere $10 a month gets you all the music we release on Hotflush and affiliate labels AND other music too, some of which never comes out anywhere else.

You can also make a one-off donation to the podcast using a card, with Paypal, or your Ethereum wallet! Head over to scubaofficial.io/support.

Plus there's also a private area for Patreon supporters in the Hotflush Discord Server... but anyone can join the conversation in the public channels.

Listen to the music discussed on the show via the Music Not Diving Podcast Spotify playlist

Chapters: 00:00 Intro and how you can support the show 03:39 Who is Denise Devenish? 07:45 Mental health challenges in creative industries 13:30 The realities of creative work 20:40 Suffering for your art 27:30 On-stage characters 30:50 Challenges of different levels of success 36:10 Metrics of value in digital music 43:30 Are young people really drinking less? 50:00 What are the treatment options? 01:07:00 Early experiences Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.