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The Effect of Dance Therapy on Physical and Psychological Characteristics in The Elderly

This study was performed to explore the effects of a dance therapy on physical and psychological characteristics in the elderly. The design of this study was a non-equivalent pre-post test experiment. The subjects consisted of elderly persons living in a facility located in Suweon and Bucheon. Fifty eight subjects, aged between 65 and 93 years who had normal cognition, sensory function, balance, and resting blood pressure. They underwent tests of balance, flexibility, muscle strength, depression, and anxiety as baseline data before dance therapy, and at 6th week and at the end of the 12nd week after following dance therapy. Twenty seven elderly persons were assigned to the experimental group and participated with the dance therapy between April and July, 1998. The dance therapy was developed by the author with the help of a dance therapist and a physiatrist. This therapy was based on the Marian Chace's dance therapy and Korean traditional dance with music. The dance therapy consists of 50 minutes session, 3 times a week for 12 weeks. One session was consisted of warming-up, expression, catharsis, sharing, and closing stage. The intensity of the dance therapy was at the 40 % of age-adjusted maximum heart rates. Data were analysed with mead standard deviation, Chi-square test, unpaired t-test, repeated measures ANOVA, and Bonferroni multiple regression using SAS program. 1. The results related to the physical characteristics were as follows : 1) The balance (standing on one leg, walking on the balancing bar), flexibility and muscle strength (knee extensor, knee flexor, ankle plantarflexor and dorsiflexor) of the experimental subjects significantly increased over time mere than that of the control subjects. 2) The experimental group had significantly higher score for balance, flexibility, muscle strength of knee extensor, and knee flexor than the control group at the 12nd week after dance therapy. 3) The experimental group had significantly higher score for muscle strength of ankle dorsiflexor and plantarflexor than the control group at the 6th week and the 12nd week after dance therapy. 2. The results related to psychological characteristics were as follows : 1) Scores of Geriatric Depression Scale, Hamilton Depression Rating Scale, and Zung's Self-rating Anxiety Scale of the experimental group were significantly decreased over time more than that of the control group. 2) The experimental group had significantly lower score for depression than the control group at the 12nd week after dance therapy. 3) The experimental group had significantly lower score for anxiety than the control group at the 6th week and the 12nd week after dance therapy. The findings showed that the dance therapy could be effective in improving the balances, flexibility, and muscle strength of lower limb, and effective in decreasing the depression and anxiety of the elderly. Additional merits of the dance therapy would be inexpensiveness, easy accessibility, and increasing interpersonal relationship. It can be suggested that the dance therapy is effective in the health promotion of the elderly.