Browsing by Subject "tanssiterapia"

Depression is a mental health disorder that causes significant individual and societal harm, such as extensive suffering and increased disability and mortality. Due to its high prevalence, depression remarkably contributes to the global disease burden, which makes continuous work for developing more effective treatment particularly important. This literary study investigates the usability of dance-based interventions in the treatment of adulthood depression. The aim is to obtain an understanding of their overall effectiveness as well as compare treatment outcomes with conventional and other treatment. An additional objective is to discuss and compile possible contributing factors and evaluate the emphasis and deficiencies of current research literature. The method of data collection for the study was a systematic literary search on databases OvidMedline and Scopus. Seven individual studies investigating the effect of a dance intervention on either diagnosed or self-reported depression were chosen for data. The intervention had to be conducted mainly face-to-face and the symptoms had to be evaluated in a quantitative measure at least before and after the intervention. Research subjects were to be over the age of 18 and have no significant physical conditions or inabilities. Studies that included only elderly people were also excluded. The results of this study indicate that dance-based treatment can significantly reduce symptoms in depressed adults. In addition, the observed reduction in depressive symptoms was greater in favour of the treatment group compared to controls receiving only conventional treatment or psychoeducation and being on a waiting-list. The effectiveness of dance interventions also appears to be as good, or in some respects better compared to previously studied mindfulness-meditation, monotonous exercise and listening to music. Furthermore, dance interventions reduced a variety of comorbid symptoms, such as anxiety, psychological stress and difficulty in identifying emotions and gave rise to other positive changes, such as increased satisfaction with life, vitality and subjective happiness. Possible methods of change may be related to the enjoyable action that dancing provides, as well as to improved emotion identification and awareness, improvements in physical health and the social environment of the interventions. However, in interpreting these results, the limitations must also be taken into account as some studies were non-experimental, follow-ups were short or absent and the gender distribution of the participants was strongly unbalanced. In the future it is important to systematically investigate and control different factors that may alter the effectiveness of dance interventions, relating to both study subjects and the intervention itself. Accumulating such information is vital as dance interventions could have notable, cost-effective uses in the treatment of depression.