Dance therapy for schizophrenia
Schizophrenia can be a long-term disabling illness. The most common treatments for people with this condition are medication (antipsychotics) and talking therapies, especially cognitive behavioural therapy and family therapy.
These treatments work well for people with 'positive' symptoms (hearing voices and other alterations of the senses) and delusions (distortions in the way the world is seen). However people experiencing 'negative' symptoms (such as flattening of mood, poverty of speech, lack of drive, loss of feeling, social withdrawal and decreased spontaneous movement) do not respond as well.
Dance therapy (also called dance movement therapy) uses dance and movement to explore a person’s emotions in a non-verbal way. The therapist will help the individual to interpret their movement as a link to personal feelings. This review aims to assess how successful this therapy is as a treatment for schizophrenia, when compared to standard care or other interventions.
Six studies were identified but five were excluded because there were no reliable data, because they were for a therapy other than dance or because they were not properly randomised. The included study compared 10 weeks of group dance therapy plus standard care, to group supportive counselling plus standard care for the same length of time. It was a community-based project involving 45 people and both groups were followed up after four months. Of the outcomes measured (mental state, satisfaction with care, leaving the study early, quality of life and adverse effects) the majority showed no difference between the two groups. However, when negative symptoms were specifically measured after 10 weeks of treatment, there was a significant improvement in the mental state of the dance therapy group.
At the four month follow-up more than 30% of the participants had been lost from both groups, making it impossible to draw any valid conclusions from the outcomes measured. Overall, because of the relatively small number of people, the data from this trial were inconclusive. However a larger randomised trial measuring outcomes such as relapse, admission to hospital, quality of life, leaving the study early, cost of care and satisfaction with treatment would help clarify whether dance therapy is an effective treatment for schizophrenia; especially for negative symptoms that don't respond so well to medication and talking therapies.
