The health benefits of beating your own drum.
By Christians Northrop, M.D. March 2016
Charles Kaplan wrote his dissertation on the positive effects of group drumming.
Psychology Today July/August 2000
Dr. Bruce Perry talks about how important rhythm is in healing trauma. He says we need “patterned, repetitive, rhythmic somatosensory activity,” literally, bodily sensing exercises. Developmental trauma happens in the body, where pre-conscious “implicit memory” was laid down in the primitive brain stem (survival brain) and viscera. Long before we had a thinking frontal cortex or “explicit memory” function. [FN1]
April 2014
Fancourt D, Perkins R, Ascenso S, Carvalho LA, Steptoe A, Williamon A (2016) Effects of Group Drumming Interventions on Anxiety, Depression, Social Resilience and Inflammatory Immune Response among Mental Health Service Users. PLoS ONE 11(3): e0151136. https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0151136
This study looks at whether general music making within community settings, not led by therapists, can still enhance the mental health and wellbeing of service users.
The findings from this pilot study suggest that helping social work students find creative outlets for self and group expression may have a positive influence towards advancing the mission of social work…Our findings indicate that group drumming is a vehicle with the potential to help individuals, groups and communities across a diversity of practice settings. 2012