Dance/Movement Therapy with Older Individuals Who Have Sustained NeurologicalInsult

摘要

The Administration on Aging (AoA) allocated funds for projects to study,demonstrate and evaluate the provision of dance/movement therapy to older individuals who are institutionalized or at risk of being institutionalized. With a shortness of research to examine the efficacy of D/MT with older individuals, this project has been the first controlled research study to focus on the use of D/MT as an intervention which specifically addresses the rehabilitative/therapeutic needs of older adults with neurological insult. The authors theorized that D/MT, a group oriented psychotherapeutic approach, could assist in the amelioration of the problems of aging-i.e., physiological or psychosocial. The maintenance and enhancement of general health involves the interaction of the neurophysiologic systems--circulatory, respiratory, digestive, muscular and neurological. As a multi-modal approach, D/MT taps into and accesses all domains of function--physical, emotional, and cognitive via the sensory systems. The technique involves the use of movement expression to stimulate the various sensory modalities simultaneously, accessing and augmenting areas of strength (e.g., auditory, motoric, visual, tactile) in order to activate a weaker channel (Berrol & Katz, 1985).