Reconnecting Parkinson’s patients through drumming

Once a week for the last 10 weeks at the Santa Fe Family Life Center, over the sounds of basketballs bouncing and pickle balls being hit, a faint drumming could be heard. In a cardio room, Oklahoma City VA’s Recreational Therapy department held a drumming class for Veterans with Parkinson’s disease.

The brand new, 10-week music therapy session was designed to help Veterans with PD “reconnect” their brains with their bodies as the disease breaks many of those important connections, making everyday tasks and actions more difficult. The program is designed to aid Veterans with Parkinson’s understand it is a progressive disease. Veterans are meant to benefit from this treatment as well as enjoy themselves.

Veterans with Parkinson’s exhibit symptoms of the disease with tremors or shaking, shuffling steps, rigid muscles, loss of automatic movement as well as speech and writing changes.

“This is a Therapeutic Recreation Music & Movement group designed for Veterans with Parkinson’s,” said Recreation Therapist Kacie Ingram. “We started with bucket drumming as our treatment for our inaugural 10 weeks. We wanted to provide a program to assist our Veterans with Parkinson’s in being physically and cognitively active in a safe treatment environment.”

“Classes keep me busy and active.”

Navy Veteran Donald Coates was a professor at Oklahoma City Community College when he was diagnosed with Parkinson’s. “My students started complaining that the professor seems confused at times. I didn’t get to teach anymore and I got to feeling useless. But then I started going to classes like this and wood carving, water aerobics, ballet and different things that keep me busy and active. They help with the depression of not being as useful anymore,” Coates said.

Air Force and Navy Reserve Veteran Michael Murray has seen the benefits of the program as it has reconnected him with music.

“I’m a musician, but with Parkinson’s you lose the ability to play. You don’t realize it until you try doing it again. But you get out and do these activities and the coordination comes back. I’m talking better, I’m walking better and I didn’t need my cane today. It’s an interesting improvement,” Murray said.

“Drumming forces us to use both sides of our brains.”

Army Veteran Don Hullett has also seen improvements in his Parkinson’s disease but knows he will always need his medication. While medication staves off the symptoms, Parkinson’s is a progressive disease and has no cure yet. But with programs like Music and Movement, Veterans are seeing benefits after a few weeks.

“It’s helped a ton. Being able to understand things a little better, being able to read a little bit better and interacting with my family is a little better now also. The drumming and music force us to use both sides of our brains and that’s what Parkinson’s does. It affects the brain and this reconnects those sides with our muscles and hands,” Hullett said.

In future Music & Movement classes, therapists plan to incorporate more gross motor movement including standing and walking, movements that require the whole body as well as the drumming. Veterans who participate provide feedback to allow staff to adjust the classes to meet the needs of the Veterans.

“In the past 10 weeks, Veterans have said they’ve noticed reduced tremors, particularly in their upper extremities,” said Creative Arts Recreation Therapist Rebecca McCoy. “Utilizing music helps to cue movements temporally, spatially and dynamically during exercises. This assists their brains in practicing desired functional movements that then can transfer to their day to day lives.”