Welcome	Abstract	Introduction	Methods
Results	Implications	References	Relevant Links

email:
jcolucci@anselm.edu
until May 2001 
or
jaclyncolucci@hotmail.com
anytime
Return to Senior Theses
Psychology Homepage

Dance/movement therapy has, in most recent years, become an effective tool for treating symptoms of anxiety. The goal of this study was to study the effects of dance therapy and relaxation therapy on anxiety levels in college students.  The participants consisted of 24 undergraduate students from a Catholic Liberal Arts College in New England and were divided into two treatment groups.  The first was a dance therapy treatment group where students followed an instructor, via videotape, in order to ease their feelings of anxiousness.  The other group was a relaxation therapy treatment, where the students listened to an audio tape consisting of the tensing and relaxing of muscle groups, accompanied with deep breathing. It was predicted that the dance therapy session would experience a greater decrease in anxiety levels due to the processes of self-expression and nonverbal communication, which allow for a greater release of the students feelings of anxiousness.  All participants were administered the Speilberger State-Trait Anxiety Inventory (Speilberger, 1983) to test for pre- and post-session anxiety.  Also, the skin conductance levels of the participants were measured following the treatment sessions to obtain a physiological measure of anxiety.  Findings indicated that both therapy sessions had a significant decrease on anxiety levels, with dance therapy levels having a greater decline than the relaxation therapy.  Suggestions were made to apply these methods to other forms of treatment, as well as expanding this study to other populations that would benefit from both dance and relaxation therapy. 

Introduction

Dance has been known to have powerful effects on the mind, body, and emotions.  With this multi-sensory experience comes a new form of treatment for illness, dance/movement therapy.  The American Dance Therapy Association (http://www.adta.org)  defines dance/movement therapy as "the psychotherapeutic use of movement as a process which furthers the emotional, cognitive, and physical integration of the individual" (Blatt, 1991).  This therapy combines rhythmic movement with self-expression to create a physiological response that is of the healing dimension.  Dance therapy acknowledges the connection of the mind and body and seeks to heal the one through the other. 

One of the more popular problems this new form of therapy seeks to treat is anxiety.  Although the effects of dance therapy on anxiety have just begun to be researched, it has already been shown to be an effective form of treatment.  Erwin-Grabner, Goodill, Hill and Von Neida (1999) describe anxiety as "an unpleasant emotional reaction that results from the perception or appraisal of a particular situation as threatening". 
One of the main reasons that this treatment is so successful is its use of non-verbal communication and other forms of self-expression.  Mohacsy (1995) claims that at times, words are simply not adequate, a physical form of communication is necessary, especially when releasing feelings of anxiety.  He claims that dance therapy offers this type of communication through self-expressive actions and relaying emotions through imagery. 

Boris (2001) credits early work of Marion Chace with providing the first insightful background to test for the effects of dance on anxiety.  Chace was a pioneer and often cited as the creator of the field dance/movement therapy in the early 1950’s, due to her background in dance and almost accidental integration into treatment.  She developed this procedure after acquiring a position at a rehabilitation facility and applying her dance background into treatment.  Boris (2001) explains that Chace never felt like she was treating her patients, or performing for them, but rather she was dancing with them, and in turn healing them.  This fact became the foundation of her treatment as a professional, and later, the foundation for the entire field of dance therapy. 

Others have followed in the footsteps of Chace by integrating dance therapy into their form of psychotherapy, such as Blatt (1991) and Hanna (1995).  Both therapists use the relationship between the therapeutic and creative process to heal their clients.  They also accredit dance therapy with increased identification or inclusion within a group, which greatly reduces anxiety, stress, and the feelings of segregation.  Both Blatt (1991) and Hanna (1995) use movement and verbal involvement in the therapy session, as well as strong encouragement of physical expression.  They adopted the treatment established by Chace and also included their own insights to broaden this relatively new form of healing.

However, other forms of therapy seek to treat the problem of anxiety, without including expression as integral to their treatment process, especially progressive relaxation therapy.  Davis, McKay and Robbins (1980) note Edmund Jacobson as developing this form of treatment that can be used to deal with the problem of anxiety.  Jacobson asserts that this process requires no imagination and is founded on that fact that the body responds to anxiety by creating tension in its muscles.  By tensing and relaxing certain muscle groups, this seems to alleviate the physical symptoms of anxiety (Davis, McKay & Robbins, 1980).  In spite of this, there is no mention of self-expression or communication where the patient can convey and disperse his or her own feelings of anxiety. 

The present experiment seeks to explain why dance/movement therapy and its self-expressive qualities, as opposed to relaxation therapy, causes a reduction of anxiety levels in college students.
The purpose of the present study was to examine the effects of dance therapy and relaxation therapy on the anxiety levels of college students, specifically state anxiety.  It was hypothesized that dance therapy, with its non-verbal and self-expressive communication methods, would elicit a greater reduction in anxiety levels than relaxation therapy.  The physiological measure of skin conductance was also tested and it was also thought that dance therapy would educe lower skin conductance levels than relaxation therapy due to the aforementioned qualities. 
 
 

Return to top

Participants
The participants consisted of 24 undergraduate psychology students from a small Catholic Liberal Arts College in New England. The ages ranged from 18 to 21 years, the mean age was 19 and the students came from middle to upper class areas of New England.  This study was conducted according to APA guidelines and the colleges Institutional Review Board.   The participants were randomly assigned to either the dance therapy group or the relaxation therapy group.  An informed consent and “rights of research participants” form in the Department of Psychology at the college was administered to each student to insure them of the strict ethical procedures and guidelines that were followed by this study.  Following the completion of the experiment, the studies received a debriefing statement, clearly outlining the goals of this study, the confidentiality of the participants and how the students could contact the researcher for further information.

Materials
To test for pre- and post-session anxiety in all three groups, the Speilberger State-Trait Anxiety Inventory (Speilberger, 1983) was used.  State anxiety levels were measured, as opposed to trait anxiety, because this is a transitory emotional state characterized by the persons present feelings of tension and apprehension and heightened autonomic nervous system arousal (Silvestri, 1985).  This element of anxiety directly indicated if the therapy session was the cause of reduced feelings of anxiousness, as opposed to trait anxiety that is usually not affected by various treatment levels because it is an innate part of a person's personality. 

For the relaxation therapy session, an audio tape by Muldry (1981) was used.  Muldry (1981) developed this form out of his clinical experiences and was a modified version of Jacobson’s progressive muscle relaxation therapy that emphasized breathing and muscle relaxation exercises. 

Apparatus
The physiological function of electrodermal activity (commonly known as skin conductance level , SCL) was tested using the Davicon MEDAC system/3.  This is a non-invasive physiological instrument system intended for use in biofeedback and physiological monitoring. 

Procedure
Dance therapy session:
The participants randomly signed up for either the dance therapy or relaxation therapy session on a sheet posted outside of the college’s Psychology Department.  The participants were given an informed consent form to complete before any of the activities occurred. A personal information sheet was also administered to the students to assess their present physical condition, their sleep patterns, alcohol consumption, tobacco consumption, and any drugs or medication that they were presently taking.  None of the post suggestions of the study were made during this process in order to keep the participants blind to this study. 

The study was run over a period of ten days and each day, either two or three people were involved in the dance therapy session.  After the student entered the testing room, they were given the informed consent form, followed by a personal inventory and finally the Speilberger State-Trait Anxiety Inventory to determine their anxiety at the present moment.  The student was told that there was a video monitor on them, but they were not being recorded, it was simply for the experimenter to observe the participant during the session, and to see if they were complying with all of the directions. 
The participants followed a pre-recorded video of an experienced dance instructor, the experimenter, demonstrating the various stretches and moves. The music was slow and allowed for maximum expression of anxiety through movement.  The video instruction lead the participants in moves reflecting the "bottling-up" of anxiety and then followed with motions sought to release this energy through the body.  These techniques and movements were chosen so that the participants could have; a form of self-expression, to promote relaxation, self-control, and gain a sense of mastery in their body and its actions (Erwin-Grabner et al., 1999).   The dance session lasted for approximately 25 minutes, upon the completion of the session; the student was brought into another room where their skin conductance level (SCL) was measured. 

Relaxation Therapy Session:
The participant was instructed to sit in a chair and then the experimenter left the room.  Concentration on breathing is important in this treatment, so the students’ first instruction on the tape was to take a deep breath and be aware of their body and the tension in their muscles.  Relaxation therapy seeks to relieve tension in the body and in turn, relieve anxiety.  Four major muscle groups were covered including: the hands, forearms and biceps: head, face, throat and shoulders; chest, stomach and lower back; and the thighs, buttocks, calves and feet (Davis, McKay & Robbins, 1980; Muldry, 1981).
Students were instructed to notice the tension in their muscles, and then to relax them, followed by a deep breath (Davis, McKay & Robbins,1980).  Each muscle group was focused upon and then tensed for about five to seven seconds, and deep breaths were taken in between tension of muscles.  Upon the completion of the session, the participants were also brought into a separate room, as in the dance therapy session, and their SCL was tested used the Davicon MEDAC system/3.  Following this, the student completed the STAI and was debriefed of this study according to APA guidelines. 

Return to top

A 2 (therapy) x 2 (session) mixed model analysis of variance was conducted to evaluate the effects of dance therapy and relaxation therapy on pre- and post- therapy session anxiety.  With an alpha level of p < 05, there were no significant results for either therapy or session, or the interaction between therapy and session.  However, the means for anxiety levels throughout both conditions were significant, F (1,22) = 3.43, p < .001.  Also, a paired sample t-test was computed to assess differences in post-session skin conductance between dance and relaxation therapy, which was non-significant.  Despite the lack of significant findings, a graphic representation for mean pre- and post-therapy anxiety levels shows that anxiety declined to a greater degree for participants in the dance therapy session compared to participants in the relaxation therapy session.  There were significant results in this study, all of the participants in both dance and relaxation therapy decreased in anxiety following their respective therapy session.

Return to top

 
The results obtained by this study did not support the hypothesis of dance therapy having a greater effect on the reduction of anxiety versus relaxation therapy.  However, when observing the graph, it should be noted that following the dance therapy session, there was a greater reduction of the means of anxiety than the post-relaxation therapy treatment. 

Most importantly, these findings are closely related to that of Silvestri (1985) who found that in both aerobic dance sessions and relaxation therapy sessions, students who entered with high anxiety had a much more pronounced decline in their anxiety than did those who entered with a relatively low level of anxiety.  In the present study, the mean level of anxiety for the pre-dance therapy session was 40.41, and the mean level for pre-relaxation therapy was 35.67, which considered to be in the normal to low range on the STAI (Speilberger, 1983).  Silvestri (1985) focused on the aerobic and physical activity of dance, rather than self-expression, which was the main outlet for anxiety in this study.  Also, these results are similar to findings by Leste and Rust (1990) and Erwin-Grabner, et al. (1999) due to the fact that both studies resulted in decreased levels of anxiety.   However, both studies accredit self-expression of anxiety through dance as the main component for reduction and it is currently unknown if the present findings can attribute this reduction to that fact alone. 

Notably, the combination of both dance and relaxation therapy has been known to provide the most positive effects on the patients outcome.  Pasini (1982) discovered that the combination of these two powerful treatments created positive results for patients that had just had a mastectomy.  Masson and Luthi (1989) also applied both of these therapies to their study of people with severe cranial injuries.  They discovered that dance, relaxation, and the combination of both increased the morale and rehabilitation of these patients.  The elderly, children, psychiatric patients, and breast cancer patients are just a few of the populations that can benefit from dance/movement therapy (Ritter & Low, 1996). 

With the current findings of dance therapy being a valuable aid in other areas outside of anxiety reduction, it can be reasoned that this therapy is extremely powerful and should be immediately applied to these other areas as a standard forms of treatment.  Adding new outcome measures, such as recording skin conductance levels, will be important for future research in this area.  Taking into account the other areas that benefited from dance and relaxation therapy, this study could expand in that direction, for treatment with the elderly, children, and other psychiatric patients.  Both dance and relaxation therapies can prove to be equally helpful to people with anxiety, and beyond this into the scope of general medical conditions and should therefore be applied to different forms of physical and psychological ailments. 

Return to top

     Davis, M.; McKay, M.; Robbins-Eschelman, E. (1980).  The Relaxation and Stress Reduction Workbook. California: New Harbinger Publications, 23-29.

     Erwin-Grabner, T.; Goodill, S. W.; Hill, E. S.; Von Neida, K. (1999).  "Effectiveness of Dance/Movement therapy on reducing test anxiety".  American Journal of Dance Therapy, 21, 19-33.

     Leste, A.; Rust, J. (1990).  "Effects of dance on anxiety." American Journal of Dance Therapy, 12, 19-25.

     Ritter, M.; Low, K. G. (1996).  "Effects of dance/movement therapy: A meta-analysis." The Arts in Psychotherapy, 23 (3), 249-260.

     Silvestri, L.R. (1985). “The effects of aerobic dance and progressive relaxation on reducing anxiety and improving physical fitness in high school girls.” Dissertation Abstracts International, 46, 1227. 

Relevant Links
 

American Dance Therapy AssociationThis official site of the ADTA contains more links, references and institutions relevant to the world of Dance/Movement Therapy.

Saint Anselm College - My home away from home!

American Art Therapy Association - If dance isn't your thing, you can always use art in your method of therapy.

Arts in Psychotherapy Journal - important journal containing information on various expressive therapies; including dance, art, music and drama therapies.

Antioch New England Graduate School - one of the best Graduate schools for Dance Therapy in the entire country and it is only one hour away!

 
 
 

Return to top