Making Music for Mental Health

The research showed that, compared with control activities, 10 weeks of group drumming led to significant improvements in measures of anxiety (by 20%), depression (by 38%), social resilience (by 23%), and wellbeing (by 16%).

These findings were maintained at 3 months follow-up, with drumming seen to facilitate positive emotions, increased agency, a sense of accomplishment, task engagement, enhanced self-awareness, and social connections.

The mechanisms behind recovery were identified as:

• Making music for mental health: Exploring the concept of 'mutual recovery'. Paper presented at the International Association of Music and Medicine conference, Toronto, Canada, June 2014
• Psychobiological responses to group drumming interventions for mental health patients. Paper presented at the American Psychosomatic Society conference, Savannah, USA, March 2015.

• artistic, due to the communicative and rhythmic nature of drumming;
• social, due to the accepting, safe, and connecting nature of the group;
• educational, due to the inclusive and free learning environment expedited by expert musical facilitators.

In addition, analyses of immune function (derived from saliva samples taken as part of the research) showed that drumming was also associated with a shift away from an inflammatory immune profile, a finding that is comparable with results from studies involving anti-depressant medication and psychotherapies.

Articles

• Fancourt D, Perkins R, Ascenso S, Atkins L, Kilfeather S, Carvalho LA, Steptoe A, & Williamon A (2016), Group drumming modulates cytokine response in mental health service users: a preliminary study, Psychotherapy and Psychosomatics, 85, 53-55 [DOI].
• 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 (e0151136), 1-16 [DOI].
• Fancourt D & Williamon A (2016), Attending a concert reduces glucocorticoids, progesterone and the cortisol/DHEA ratio, Public Health, 132, 101-104 [DOI].
• Perkins R, Ascenso S, Atkins L, Fancourt D, & Williamon A (2016), Making music for mental health: how group drumming mediates recovery, Psychology of Well-Being, 6 (11), 1-17 [DOI].