WARNING: the following article contains subject matter that pertains to suicide, mental health, etc.
Rapper, Logic, took to the stage in 2017 to preform his hit song '1-800-273-8255' at the MTV's music video awards to 5.4 million viewers.
According to lifeline, following Logic's performance calls to the National Suicide Prevention Line jumped by 50%. During the 34 day period where the song had substantial public attention there was a 6.9% increase in calls (9915 calls). That same time period saw the reduction in suicides by 5.5% (245 suicides).
Now, '1-800-273-8255' is hitting headlines everywhere after a recent study found that 10,000 more calls were made to the hotline. The music video that came out nearly four months after the songs release has racked up 419 million views.
According to BMJ "The song, which was labelled a “suicide prevention anthem” by the media, entered the top 10 of the Billboard Hot 100 music charts in the US, remaining there for several weeks and ranking as high as number 3 in September 2017. The song’s release was also associated with a nearly 10% uptick in online Google searches for Lifeline in the 28 days after its release. By the end of 2020, the song had surpassed one billion streams on Spotify."
The lead author of the study, Dr. Thomas Niederkrotenthaler from the University of Vienna in Austria found an interest in the prevention of suicide very early on in his life. Our to this Thomas "studied the number of daily calls to the US National Suicide Prevention Lifeline and the number of suicides (obtained from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention) in the United States during eight years between 2010 and 2018."
Their findings were game changing. Niederkrotenthaler and his colleagues ended up finding that "when combining the 34-day period after the song’s release on April 28, 2017, with the 34-day period after Logic’s performance at the MTV Video Music Awards in 2017 and the 34-day period after Logic’s performance at the Grammy Awards in 2018, the US National Suicide Prevention Lifeline received 9,915 calls (6.9 percent) over the expected number of calls and 245 (5.5 percent) suicides below the expected number of suicides. The most Lifeline calls were after Logic’s performance of the song at the MTV Video Music Awards in 2017."
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