The joy dance: Specific effects of a single dance intervention on psychiatric patients with depression
Section snippets
DMT effects on depression: a brief literature review
The meta-analysis on the effects of DMT of Ritter and Low (1996) quotes two studies involving psychiatric patients with depression (Brooks & Stark, 1989; Heber, 1993) and five studies on persons with depression altogether (Dosamantes, 1990; Dosamantes-Alperson & Merill, 1980; Kuettel, 1982). The effect sizes these studies report are moderate to high. The meta-analysis should be read together with the methodological critique by Cruz and Sabers (1998), who found that the actual effect sizes were
Lack of vertical movement in patients with depression
Research on embodiment1
Our study
How much joy sleeps inside of us and we do not awaken it
This study used a three-group repeated-measure design, comparing the treatment group (dance) to both a music-only (music) and a movement-only control group (home trainer). The goal of the study was to investigate specific effects of dance/movement therapy. A simple structured form of dance that can be used at the beginning or the end of DMT sessions was selected: a circle dance from Israel (Hava Nagila—“Let us have joy”) geared to evoke
Sample
Thirty-one patients from the Psychiatric University Hospital in Heidelberg volunteered to participate in this study (18 men and 13 women). Mean age was 42.7 (S.D. = 14.9, range 21–66). All were diagnosed with depression using ICD 10, either by main or additional diagnosis. There were 21 patients with a main diagnosis of depression (moderate or severe recurrent depressive disorder; moderate or severe depressive episodes; schizoaffective disorder, depressive type; bipolar affective disorders,
Results
Two one-way ANOVAs were computed to analyze how condition (dance versus music, and dance versus home trainer) affected the difference score Δ of depression, vitality and affect. All three dependent variables were correlated between r = .60 and r = .85. The alpha level chosen was p < .05. Results suggest that depression decreased significantly in the dance group only as compared to the music-only group (F(20, 1) = 14,19; p = .001; d = 1.28) and the movement only group (F(20, 1) = 4,57; p = .046; d = .90).
Discussion
Considering the small sample size (with just the minimum number of participants to do the computations) the results obtained in this study are very encouraging and helpful in setting priorities for future studies. Participants in the dance group showed a significant decrease of depression, whereas depression scores did not change for participants of the other two groups. Dance acted thus specifically on depression reduction. Further, participants in the dance group showed a significantly higher
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