Research Trends of Drama Therapy in Mental Health : A Comprehensive Bibliometric analysis

Imagine the human mind as a vast, complex garden. For centuries, people have tried to tend to this garden using many different tools: some use the sharp scissors of logic, others use the gentle water of conversation, and some use the colorful paint of art. One particularly lively tool is drama therapy. Think of it not as watching a play in a theater, but as stepping onto the stage yourself. It's a way of healing where people use acting, role-playing, and storytelling to untangle their feelings, practice new ways of being, and heal emotional wounds. It's like a gym for the soul, but instead of lifting weights, you lift your voice and move your body to work through problems.

Now, imagine trying to map out the entire history of this garden. Who planted the first seeds? Which tools are being used the most right now? Are there new, shiny gadgets appearing, or are we just reusing old ones? This is where bibliometrics comes in. It's a bit like being a detective who doesn't look for fingerprints, but for footprints in the snow of academic writing. Instead of tracking people, bibliometricians track papers, authors, and keywords to see how a field of science is growing, changing, and who is doing the work. It helps us see the big picture of a discipline, spotting trends that might be too small to notice when you're just reading one book at a time.

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The Great Drama Therapy Explosion

This paper is a massive treasure hunt through the history of drama therapy research. The authors, a team of curious investigators, decided to count and map every single piece of writing about drama therapy they could find in a giant digital library called Scopus. They looked at everything published between 1949 and 2025. In total, they found 785 documents—a mix of articles, books, and studies.

What they discovered is that drama therapy is currently going through a massive growth spurt. If you imagine the history of drama therapy research as a rocket ship, it spent the first few decades (the 1940s through the 1990s) sputtering on the launchpad, with very few papers being written. But then, the engines kicked in. The 2010s saw a huge jump, but the 2020s (the last few years up to 2025) are where the real explosion happened. In fact, nearly half of all the research ever written about this topic—49.4% of it—was published just in this current decade. It's as if the entire history of the field was written in the last few years, suggesting that interest in this healing method is skyrocketing.

The Rocket Ship's Future

The authors didn't just count the papers; they tried to predict the future. They used a mathematical model (a fancy way of drawing a curve) to guess how much more research will be written. They suggest that the field is still in its "steep climb" phase. They predict that the number of new papers will keep rising until it hits a ceiling, or "saturation point," of about 4,929 publications. They estimate this peak will happen around the year 2039. So, if you're a young researcher today, the paper suggests you're jumping on a train that is just picking up speed, with plenty of room to grow for the next two decades.

Who is Doing the Work?

When the authors looked at who is writing these papers, they found a mix of old-school pioneers and new stars. A small group of super-productive researchers, like N. Sajnani, S. Keisari, and H. Orkibi, are leading the charge. However, the paper also found something interesting about the "teamwork" in this field. Most of the people who write about drama therapy (about 87%) have only written one paper in their lives. It's like a field where a few professional chefs are running the kitchen, but hundreds of home cooks have tried their hand at the recipe once and then moved on. This suggests that while many people are curious about drama therapy, a smaller, dedicated core of experts is doing the heavy lifting to build the science.

The research is also heavily concentrated in a few specific places. The United States is the clear leader, followed by the United Kingdom and Israel. The paper notes that there is a big gap: very little research is coming from low- and middle-income countries, even though mental health struggles happen everywhere. It's like the garden is being tended to very carefully in a few wealthy neighborhoods, while other parts of the world are largely ignored in the research.

What Are They Talking About?

If you were to take all the words from these 785 papers and make a word cloud, the biggest words would be Mental Health, Psychodrama, Dementia, Trauma, and Older Adults. This tells us that drama therapy is currently being used most often to help older people, those dealing with trauma, and people with memory issues.

But there are some exciting new words popping up, too. Virtual Reality and Digital Interventions are appearing more often. This suggests that the field is adapting to the modern world, perhaps using video calls or computer games to help people heal, a trend that likely got a big boost during the global pandemic when people couldn't meet in person.

The Bottom Line

This paper paints a picture of a field that is young, energetic, and growing fast. It suggests that drama therapy is moving from a niche interest into a serious, well-studied part of mental health care. However, the authors also warn that the field needs to grow up in a few ways. It needs more teamwork between countries, more studies that are very strict and scientific (like large randomized trials), and a bigger voice for researchers from all over the world, not just the wealthy ones.

In short, drama therapy is having its moment in the spotlight, and the research is proving that it's a powerful tool. But the story is just beginning, and the next chapter will depend on whether the field can invite more people from all corners of the globe to join the cast.