The Impact of Dance Movement Interventions on Psychological Health in Older Adults without Dementia: A Systematic Review and Meta-Analysis.

BACKGROUND

Lifestyle-based multimodal interventions that integrate physical, sensory, cognitive and social enrichment are suggested to promote healthy mental aging and resilience against aging and Alzheimer's disease (AD).

OBJECTIVES

This meta-analysis examined the efficacy of dance movement interventions (DMI) as an integrated mind-body activity on outcomes of psychological health in older adults.

METHODS

Pre-registration was carried out with PROSPERO (CRD42021265112). PubMed, Web of Science and PsycINFO were searched for randomized controlled trials (RCT) evaluating the effects of DMI (>4 weeks' duration) compared to comparators on measures of psychological health (primary outcome) and cognitive function (additional outcome) among older adults without dementia (aged ≥55). Data of 14 primary RCT ( = 983, = 494, = 489) were synthesized using a random effects meta-analysis with robust variance estimation.

RESULTS

DMI had a small positive effect on overall psychological health ( = 0.30; 95% confidence interval []: 0.06, 0.53; = 0.02, 65.04) compared to control conditions. Small effects of DMI on positive and negative psychological domains as well as quality of life were not statistically significant. DMI had a medium positive effect on general cognitive function ( = 0.50; 95% : 0.12, 0.89, = 0.02, 79.61) over comparators. None of the primary intervention studies evaluated measures of neuroplasticity.

CONCLUSIONS

We found that DMI was effective in promoting mental health amongst older adults without dementia, suggesting that the multimodal enrichment tool is a potential strategy for health promotion and prevention of AD. High-quality intervention studies are needed to expand evidence on DMI-induced changes in specific psychological domains and identify underlying neurophysiological correlates.