Where Psychiatry Meets Music.

This week’s piece is inspired by a blog I have stumbled across by a psychiatrist and music fan called Niall Crumlish who unfortunately passed away earlier this year.

An established music writer, Niall carved out a unique place in cultural commentary. His blog, Psychiatry and Music, was more than just about reviewing albums or ranking songs. His blogs were an exploration of what music does to us and how it interacts with our lives, our emotions, and our identities. Through his dual lens as a clinician and a passionate listener (and writer), Niall framed music as a living, breathing dialogue between art and the psyche.

At the core of his approach was the conviction that music is unfinished until we bring ourselves to it as listeners. He once wrote: “I realised that I could, indeed had to, bring my own life to the music and have a dialogue with it, rather than ask the music to provide its own protagonist. I began to learn at 33 that the music I wanted to hear was music that was not finished until the listener finished it: it was by design a partly painted canvas, and you had to bring your own brush.”

To me, this statement is more than poetic reflection; it’s a radical reframing of what it means to listen. He encouraged his readers to stop treating music as an external object to be judged and instead to see it as a co-creator in our personal narratives. Songs were not complete without the emotional, intellectual, and even unconscious contributions of the listener. In this sense, every listening experience became a deeply personal collaboration between artist and audience.

I love this idea, in my own musicking, my songs always feel half finished until they have washed the ears of a listener, generally through live performance. It almost needs to be processed through the human mind of others, whether they like the music or not.

Niall’s psychiatric background enriched this perspective. He understood that people bring histories of trauma, resilience, longing, and joy into their encounters with art. He saw music as a vessel for these complex inner experiences, a way of articulating feelings that resist ordinary language. To me, his blogs/essays often felt as though they were halfway between reflection and therapy session, open, compassionate, and profoundly human, balancing vulnerability and intellect. He wrote as someone unafraid to acknowledge the messy intersections of his own life with the music he loved. His reflections were not detached or clinical, they were lived, felt, and raw. His honesty as a listener and clinician almost gives us permission to engage with music on our own terms. 

In an age of Spotify robbery and fast consumption, his slow, thoughtful approach was a refreshing discovery. He asked not what a record 'meant' in the abstract, but what it could mean for you or me. His essays reminded us that art is not a finished monument but an unfinished conversation that only finds completion when we bring our own brushstrokes to the canvas. Surely, this perspective remains one of the most generous gifts us as writers can leave behind?

Have a read of his stuff.

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Adam Ficek hosts a monthly show 'Tonic Music' on Totally Wired Radio, where he talks to various guests about music and mental health. You can listen again to any of the previous show on the Tonic Music Mixcloud page.