Dance movement psychotherapy practice in the UK: Findings from the Arts Therapies Survey 2011

Arts therapies practice in the UK, due to its complexity, is rarely adequately described and what constitutes main features of the professions often remains unclear. A nationwide Arts Therapies Survey was conducted in 2011 with the aim to offer a description of clinical practice with particular emphasis on work with depression. The survey received responses from 395 arts therapists, among whom 36 were dance movement therapists. While complete data from the survey is available elsewhere, this paper presents results particularly relevant to dance movement practitioners and highlights key areas of their practice, including usual work settings, client groups and preferred theoretical approaches. Both quantitative and qualitative data are used to illustrate the points discussed. Additionally, dance movement psychotherapists' responses concerning their work with depression are presented against other arts therapies professions' practice with this condition in the UK. Finally, areas for further research are recommended

Arts Therapies: Hitting the HEAT Targets; A Report of the Scottish Arts Therapies Forum (SATF) (with contributions from Scottish Representatives of Arts Therapies, Chairs of the Arts Therapies Councils and the Workforce Planning Team

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Qualitative and Arts-Based Evidence from Children Participating in a Pilot Randomised Controlled Study of School-Based Arts Therapies

(1) Background: There is limited evidence on the impact of arts therapies as a tool for the prevention of mental health difficulties in childhood. This pilot randomised controlled study aimed to investigate the impact of arts therapies on children’s mental health and well-being; the qualitative and arts-based evidence is presented in this article. (2) Methods: Sixty-two children (aged 7–10) with mild emotional and behavioral difficulties were recruited across four primary schools and were randomly assigned to either art therapy, music therapy, dance movement therapy, or dramatherapy. All children were interviewed individually after their participation in arts therapies. (3) Results: Children verbally and artistically expressed that they experienced positive changes in their mental health and well-being, such as improved self-expression, safety, empowerment, hope, and optimism for the future. The arts were particularly important for expressing complex emotions and feelings that cannot be easily verbalised. Recommendations are provided to improve the quality of group arts therapies in future interventions, such as through smaller groups, longer sessions, and strategies to protect the therapeutic environment. (4) Conclusions: This study embraced all arts therapies as one research domain and set children’s verbal and non-verbal responses at the heart of outcome evaluation. This article highlights the importance of incorporating qualitative and arts-based methods to capture changes in children’s mental health well-being in future experimental studies

The Development of Mindful-Based Dance Movement Therapy Intervention for Chronic Pain: A Pilot Study with Chronic Headache Patients

Funding Information: The study is part of a doctoral study that is financially supported by Riga Stradins University. Publisher Copyright: © Copyright © 2021 Majore-Dusele, Karkou and Millere.Chronic pain is of significant global concern. There is growing evidence that body–mind therapies and psychological approaches can contribute toward changing chronic pain perceptions. This is the first model described in the literature that combines a mindfulness-based approach with dance movement therapy and explores the potential psychological and pain-related changes for this client population. In this paper, the results from the pilot study are presented involving patients with chronic headache recruited in an outpatient rehabilitation setting. Methods: In this pilot study, 29 patients (n = 29) with chronic headache were randomized to either the Mindful-Based Dance Movement Therapy (MBDMT) group or the waiting list control group (treatment as usual, TAU). The MBDMT group was offered 10 sessions in a clinical outpatient rehabilitation setting for 5 weeks. Data were collected pre- and post-intervention and 16 weeks after the intervention was finished. The Hospital Anxiety and Depression Scale (HADS), Patient Health Questionnaire−9 (PHQ-9), Five Facet Mindfulness Questionnaire (FFMQ), and Numeric Rating Scale (NRS) were used as outcome measures. Results: The working model of MBDMT identifies nine therapeutic mechanisms (safe therapeutic environment, mindfulness skills, body awareness, relaxation/releasing, distancing and staying with discomfort, meaning making, self-regulation, acceptance and integration, creative process). Per-protocol analysis reveals statistically significant reduction of pain intensity and depression scores in favor of the MBDMT group, and these improvements were maintained in the follow-up assessment. Conclusions: The results suggest that MBDMT is a feasible and promising therapy approach for chronic pain patients. The pilot study offered sufficient information and preliminary results in the desirable direction to enable the researchers to move to a randomized controlled trial (RCT) stage in order to establish the efficacy of the intervention. Clinical Trial Registration: The study was registered in the www.researchregistry.com, registry (5483).publishersversionPeer reviewe

Effectiveness of Dance Movement Therapy in the Treatment of Adults with Depression: A Systematic Review with Meta-Analyses

Background: Depression is the largest cause of mental ill health worldwide. Although interventions such as Dance Movement Therapy (DMT) may offer interesting and acceptable treatment options, current clinical guidelines do not include these interventions in their recommendations mainly because of what is perceived as insufficient research evidence. The 2015 Cochrane review on DMT for depression includes only three studies leading to inconclusive results. In a small and underfunded field such as DMT, expensive multi-centered Randomized Controlled Trials (RCTs) are as yet rare. It is therefore, necessary to not only capture evidence from RCTs, but to also look beyond such designs in order to identify and assess the range of current evidence.Methods: We therefore conducted a systematic review of studies that aimed to explore the effectiveness in the use of DMT with people with depression. This led to a qualitative narrative synthesis. We also performed meta-analyses that calculated the effect size for all included studies, studies with RCT designs only, followed by a subgroup analysis and a sensitivity analysis. In all meta-analyses a random effects model was used with Standardized Mean Differences (SMD) to accommodate for the heterogeneity of studies and outcome measures.Results: From the 817 studies reviewed, eight studies were identified as meeting our inclusion criteria. Three hundred and fifty one people with depression (mild to severe) participated, 192 of whom attended DMT groups while receiving treatment as usual (TAU) and 159 received TAU only. Qualitative findings suggest there was a decrease in depression scores in favor of DMT groups in all studies. Subgroup analysis performed on depression scores before and 3 months after the completion of DMT groups suggested changes in favor of the DMT groups. When sensitivity analysis was performed, RCTs at high risk of bias were excluded, leaving only studies with adult clients up to the age of 65. In these studies, the highest effect size was found favoring DMT plus TAU for adults with depression, when compared to TAU only.Conclusions: Based on studies with moderate to high quality, we concluded that DMT is an effective intervention in the treatment of adults with depression. Furthermore, by drawing on a wide range of designs with diverse quality, we were able to compile a comprehensive picture of relevant trends relating to the use of DMT in the treatment of depression. Despite the fact that there remains a paucity of high-quality studies, the results have relevance to both policy-making and clinical practice, and become a platform for further research

Report on Traditional Dance: Conceptual Model and Pedagogical Issues. Report submitted to the European Union (Socrates-Minerva) for the OpenDance project.

Karkou V and Nundy A. (2007)sch_occpub1998pu

Description of arts therapies practice with adults suffering from depression in the UK: Qualitative findings from the nationwide survey

There is growing evidence that arts therapies present a relevant treatment option for depression, but the experiences, methods, tools and methods of practice of arts therapists with this client group remain unclear. Thus, this research study aimed to describe the specifics of the practice of arts therapies with depression. In 2011, all arts therapists registered in the UK were invited to complete an online questionnaire concerning their practice in general and in relation to depression. The Arts Therapies Survey received 395 responses. Arts therapists who work primarily with depression were identified and compared to those who do not work with depression on a range of factors. These quantitative results were presented elsewhere (Zubala, MacIntyre, Gleeson, & Karkou, 2013). An analysis of the qualitative material was guided by the strategy of grounded theory, and findings were obtained through thematic analysis. The current paper introduces these findings, adding depth to the knowledge previously gained through the quantitative analysis. Arts therapists worked across various settings with highly complex clients; however, therapists struggled with the tension of providing care according to guidelines, which they found inflexible and at times misguided. The therapists tended to vary the theoretical model of their therapeutic approach depending on individual client factors and often collaborated with other professionals using a variety of standardized tools to measure outcomes. The findings further offer a detailed understanding of the therapeutic process and describe the meaning of clinical practice within arts therapies