What is Dance Movement Therapy (DMT)?
DMT is defined by the European Association Dance Movement Therapy (EADMT) as ‘the therapeutic use of movement to further the emotional, cognitive, physical, spiritual and social integration of the individual.
This study investigates the use of Dance Movement Psychotherapy (DMP) on people with dementia, on care-staff, on embodied practices and the author’s own reflections and developing understanding about their use and importance. Embodied practices mean engaging with a person through the lived experience of their own body in relationship to self and others, thus people with dementia can be more effectively reached and communicated with. Embodied practices contributed to: improving mobility; affirming identity; supporting affective communication; increasing observed ‘well-being’ and extending the range and quality of care relationships.
This study proposes care-staff need to be better informed psychologically about how to engage, how to ‘build bridges of understanding’ between the ‘known’ and the ‘not yet known’. Care-staff need to be more accepting that communications and behaviours expressed through ‘strangeness’ and ‘otherness’ can be better understood and related to as having meaning and importance. This is a paradigm shift away from bio-medical thinking, placing the onus on care-staff becoming more adept at communicating and finding meaning in so-called ‘non-sense’. Embodied practices support remaining individual capacities and communication skills and by way of this, ‘Personhood’ (Kitwood and Bredin, 1992a: 274).
The fieldwork was within a mental-health hospital ward in England. A single DMP session was studied using a qualitative and quantitative methodology, regarding impact on the patient, on care-staff, and on the use of embodied practices. It was recorded on video (VTR), mapped using Dementia Care Mapping (DCM) with the impact on care-staff studied using questionnaires. Analysis of the VTR transcript yielded thirty-three linked themes leading to five further meta-themes. DCM results indicated significant effects on raising and supporting observed ‘well-being’, consistent with other sessions of a similar type (Crichton, 1997, Perrin, 1998).
Contribution to knowledge concerns the development of a more creative, more expressive and embodied approach to the care of people living with dementia as presented here by the development of a new approach called ‘Creative Care’.
To elucidate the ways in which the neurological insult of the dementia condition may be diminished by DMP, as mediated by care-staff, as a creative and and embodied means for improving communication and quality of life for some people who develop dementing conditions. It covers a detailed critical account of embodied DMP implemented by the Researcher/Practitioner with a group of four older people living with dementia in an in-patient setting of an NHS hospital including ten members of their care staff. It situates DMP theory and practice within a succinct yet comprehensive review of wide-ranging multi-disciplinary literature.
1) To observe the effects on well/illbeing of people with dementia participating in a DMP session.
2) To identify the embodied practices occurring during the the session and their impact on both people with dementia and their care staff.
3) To identify the impact of the DMP session on the care-staff
Builds on a very detailed knowledge of earlier work concerning psycho-social interventions within a person-in-relationship paradigm and makes an original and important contribution to understanding what it is like to have dementia from the older person's perspective as revealed through the use of DCM8, as well as to the actual and potential use of of embodied activities and approaches designed to enhance communication and well-being. Evidence provided of the importance for staff carers to have opportunities for experiential and practical learning opportunities spread over a number of weeks and designed to assist in extending their tolerance, lessen their anxiety and increase their capacity for responding to "difference", "strangeness" and "otherness". It also draws out the importance of care staff being supported in acknowledging their own vulnerability, so often exacerbated by the challenges presented by people living with dementia, and the necessity for having effective learning opportunities for developing various creative means of caring.
DMT is defined by the European Association Dance Movement Therapy (EADMT) as ‘the therapeutic use of movement to further the emotional, cognitive, physical, spiritual and social integration of the individual.