Indications and contraindications in dance movement therapy: learning from practitioners' experience

Dance movement therapy is increasingly established as an evidence-based treatment modality in health care. However, systematic knowledge on indications and contraindications of dance movement therapy (DMT) are widely lacking. In this study, we developed a questionnaire to learn from practitioners' experience with DMT intervention methods for specific patient populations. Fifty-four practitioners from ten different countries worldwide indicated the "dos and don'ts" for their main populations. These inductively and experientially gained indications and contraindications for DMT, and their justifications, fell into 22 clinical categories such as psychiatry, psychosomatics, neurology, trauma, eating disorder, pain, oncology, and treatment of specific groups such as children, adolescents, families, pregnant women or prisoners. Extensive materials resulted for each disorder. Results suggest that for clinical populations the Chace method, body image work, and movement rituals, such as circle dances, are indicated without contraindications; relaxation and inner focus are differentially indicated (e.g. inner focus is contraindicated for eating disorder and schizophrenia), whereas Authentic Movement and free improvisation are are often only indicated with high functioning participants, and contraindicated with low functioning participants (level of functioning moderated the results). Possibilities and limitations of this inductive participatory approach to investigating indications are discussed. The study contributes to defining differential disorder-specific DMT interventions, therapeutic factors of DMT, as well as new methods. Future studies should increasingly investigate indications and contraindications of DMT with diverse methods and populations.