Reconnecting Through Rhythm: OKC VA Uses Drumming to Help Veterans with Parkinson’s Disease.

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In a cardio room past the basketball and pickleball courts, the OKC Veteran Affairs Recreational Therapy department held a drumming class for Veterans with Parkinson’s Disease. 

“This is a Therapeutic Recreation Music and Movement group designed for Veterans with Parkinson's Disease (PD),” said Kacie Ingram, OKC VA Recreation Therapist. “We started with bucket drumming as our treatment modality for our inaugural 10 weeks.”

The brand new ten-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 Veteran's with Parkinson’s understand it is a progressive disease. Veterans are meant to benefit from this treatment as well as enjoy themselves.

“We wanted to provide a program to assist our Veterans with Parkinson’s, in being physically and cognitively active in a safe treatment environment,” Ingram said.

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.

Navy Veteran Donald Coates was a professor at Oklahoma City Community College when he was diagnosed with Parkinson’s.

“My students started complaining, the professor seemed confused at times,” said Donald Coates. “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.”

Air Force and Navy Reserves 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 loose ability to play,” Murray said. “and you don’t realize it until you try doing it again. But you get out and you do these activities, and the coordination comes back. I’m talking better, I’m walking better I didn’t need my cane today. It’s an interesting improvement.”

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,” Hullet said. “Being able to understand things a little better, being able to read a little bit better, 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.”

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

“In the past 10 weeks Veterans have expressed they’ve noticed reduced tremors, particularly in their upper extremities,” said Rebecca McCoy, Creative Arts Recreation Therapist. “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.”

Veterans with Parkinson’s are encouraged to ask their primary care physician for a referral.

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