I live with depression and anxiety. I do All The Things to reduce the extent to which they affect my daily life but, regardless, they are my companions. So, I know, on a personal level, what it is to look for a community where I feel accepted and understood as I am.
Jason Schreurs (class of 2022) wrote Scream Therapy: A Punk Journey Through Mental Health (Flex Your Head Press, 2023) to reach out to his community. Schreurs lives with bipolar disorder. Depression and anxiety are not fun, but the roller coaster ride of bipolar disorder? As my mother used to say, “Thank the lord for small mercies.”
Scream Therapy is what Schreurs promises to be: a message to people who, at some point in their lives stumbled into punk music, often by way of skateboarding, and found their community. Punk concerts are always screaming loud, the mosh pits are nothing I could ever trust, and sometimes the live performances are improv’d by musicians who assembled just that evening, for that evening only.
I’m the first to admit I don’t like hard core music. The heaviest metal bands I’ve ever enjoyed are the likes of Steppenwolf, Rush, and the Doors—easy listening compared with punk. But the thesis of Scream Therapy is not that everyone should like punk. The thesis is that an inordinate number of punk rockers feel strongly, as Schreurs does, that punk music saved their lives. Without the community they found in punk—a community that gave them a sense of belonging for the first time … well, ever—they would have ended their own lives.
Consider this passage about a man named Brian, now a middle-aged husband and dad with a day job that wouldn’t suggest anything about him as a person, much less how deeply he relies on punk music and the punk community for his mental health:
For Brian, leaving his parents’ house for a more stable environment allowed him to focus on turning his pain into positivity. Brian poured all he had into screaming in bands and organizing shows. At age 16, he booked a West Coast tour for Ashes, his first serious band. At 17, he went to Europe with Battery, the straight edge hardcore band his name became synonymous with for the next eight years. Between tours, Brian moved to Boston when he was 18 and set up one of the most popular recording studios of the ‘90s and ‘00s….
But depression creeped back into his life after opening the studio. He buried his internal turmoil and poured everything into the music, surrounding himself with a support network of bands like Gainesville, Florida’s Hot Water Music—unwavering rays of positivity with members that would do anything for him. It was the most amazing time of his life, but he kept his struggles hidden, stifling his inner doubt and emotional pain. “I was one of the most sought-after record producers for bands all over the world, and I felt like a failure.” Brian digs deep for the right words to make sense of that time. “The thing about depression is it’s not fucking reasonable. It doesn’t make sense.”
(Boy, do I understand that sentiment.)
Years later, Brian’s nervous system refused to hold back his depression any longer.… “I remember my wife saying to me, ‘You need to be doing music. You need to be writing.’ I had to force myself to think about my issues and acknowledge them and not let them grow and become corrosive.” One evening, Brian picked up a guitar in his basement. Less than 10 minutes later, he had the first song he’d written in 20 years. I picture his song as a battering ram, bashing the pain trapped inside. “I can’t express to you the weight that came off my shoulders.” Brian sighs and tells me singing and songwriting for his new melodic hardcore band Be Well is his daily therapy….
“I don’t know that I’ve ever felt such gratitude as I feel toward punk and hardcore,” he says. “It gave me a family and an avenue to find myself at multiple times in my life when I needed a community to hear me, and see me, and appreciate not only my strengths but my weaknesses.” Brian chokes up and pretends to clear his throat. I do the same. His words could be mine.
Not every type of music, or any art form, is for everyone. (I look at Jackson Pollock’s paintings and think What?) But there is a body of research on the importance of community to mental health, some of which Schreurs cites in Scream Therapy. It doesn’t matter what bring people together around as long as the community they create provides its members with a feeling of belonging, a feeling they have people to turn to as much to celebrate their victories as to seek support and reassurance when life sucks.
I don’t imagine I’ll ever care for punk music. But if Schreurs and his peers find in the punk community what they need to get through life, more power to them. And more power to Jason Schreurs for reaching out to whomever he can reach through his book as well as his podcast, also called Scream Therapy, and letting them know there are people out there that they, too, can turn to for support, laughter, joy, reassurance—or maybe just to have a really satisfying scream.
October 10 is World Mental Health Day. Here are some other books by MFA grads relating to mental health and the role of community in maintaining it:
About mental health and its impact on one family:
Run, Hide, Repeat: A Memoir of a Fugitive Childhood, by Pauline Dakin.
About the importance of building community around almost anything:
The Fruitful City: The Enduring Power of the Urban Food Forest, by Helena Moncrieff.
Just Jen: Thriving Through Multiple Sclerosis, by Jen Powell.
The Heart of Homestay: Creating Meaningful Connections When Hosting International Students, by Jennifer Robin Wilson.
About the power of community, as well as the challenges it can present:
The Minister’s Wife: A Memoir of Faith, Doubt, Friendship, Loneliness, Forgiveness, and More, by Karen Stiller.
