Research studies in drama therapy emphasizing the benefits derived from opportunities for playful interaction and the externalization of significant experiences through drama; these processes were found to reinforce internal resources and contribute to a sense of generativity.
Enactment of scenes leads to increase in orientation to past and present, self-understanding, and acceptance, and meaningful personal relationships. Engaging with drama has resulted in increased self-acceptance, meaning making, relationships with group members, capacity for self-reflection and self-expression and the integrity and coherence of one’s life story.

Proposed Mechanisms of Change

The studies reviewed suggest that shifts in depressive symptoms that result from drama interventions are catalyzed by mechanisms of change such as:

• Physical: engagement in playful, embodied activity contributing to sense of vitality and regulated, relaxed breathing;

• Cognitive: orientation to past and present, reinforc
ement of positive coping strategies, coherent organization of self-expression, increased memory recall, facilitation of meaning
making;

• Emotional/intrapersonal: use of metaphors, roles, and playful, embodied enactments providing a suitable distance to activate internal resources and externalize and communicate
inner conflicts and strengths, and facilitate emotional regulation;

• Social: individual and group activities prompting increased positive social interaction.

Social processes such as social recognition, learning from others, and being able to help others that are central to life were amplified through use of processes of dramatic projection, embodiment, enactment, witnessing, and the life-drama connection, reciprocal play, affective relationality, joy, con-constructed imagination. It reinforces participants strengths, whilst dramatic projection prompts social interaction and facilitates perspective through externalization of inner conflicts. One of the most salient advantages of drama is acceptance of sadness as non-pathological and regarded as contributing to positive affect in participants. It results in stimulation of memory, encourages role flexibility, and reinforces past coping strategies.

Jennings, S. (2018). “Drama therapy in working with people with dementia: the need for playfulness in creative ageing as an antidote to depression and isolation,” in Arts Therapies in the Treatment of Depression, eds, A. Zubala and V. Karkou (London: Routledge), 204–216.