"Trauma Healing Club" Brings Drumming To Students With PTSD

In a 2021 study published in the Journal of Adolescent Trauma, researchers at the University of Memphis School of Social Work explored how to better support at-risk African refugee children and their families who have faced Adverse Childhood Experiences (ACEs).

With funding from the State of Tennessee, the team created the "Trauma Healing Club," an after-school program designed to be both trauma-sensitive and culturally welcoming. Instead of using a standard, one-size-fits-all approach, they took a proven trauma treatment framework and customized it to fit the specific needs of the local refugee community.

To make the healing process more engaging and culturally relevant, the researchers incorporated traditional practices like African drumming alongside a unique, multi-level mentoring system. Specifically, the foundational framework utilized was the 10-week Cognitive Behavioral Intervention for Trauma in Schools (CBITS), an evidence-based model proven to reduce PTSD and depression. To ensure cultural relevance without compromising clinical fidelity, researchers integrated two key adaptations. First, African drumming was added to each session to help youth regulate emotions, reduce stress, and foster community bonding. Second, a "Pyramid Mentoring" system was implemented, allowing successful youth graduates to return as peer mentors, providing incoming cohorts with powerful multi-generational modeling, cultural socialization, and social support. The main goal of this hands-on research was to see if customizing an existing therapy model would make it more effective for a community-based setting.

The results were highly positive: the culturally adapted program was not only deeply supportive of the families' backgrounds, but it also successfully helped the children heal, leading to significant improvements in their daily behavior, functioning, and overall well-being after completing the program.