Special lssues

Dance Therapy for Mental Health

Submission Deadline: 13 February 2021 (closed)

Guest Editors

Dr. Gunasekaran Manogaran [Leading Guest Editor]
Big Data Scientist, University of California, Davis, USA
Dr. Gunasekaran Manogaran is currently working as a Big Data Scientist in University of California, Davis, USA. He is also an Adjunct Assistant Professor, Department of Computer Science & Information Engineering, Asia University, Taiwan and Adjunct Faculty, in School of Computing, SRM Institute of Science and Technology, Kattankulathur, India. He is a visiting researcher/scientist in University of La Frontera, Colombia and International University of La Rioja, Spain.

Dr. Hassan Qudrat-Ullah [Co-Guest Editor]
Professor of Decision Sciences, School of Administrative Studies, York University, Toronto, Canada
Dr. Hassan Qudrat-Ullah earned his Ph.D. (Decision Sciences) in 2002 from NUS Business School, National University of Singapore. Hassan did post-doctoral fellowship at Carnegie Mellon University, USA, in 2002-2003 before joining York University in 2003.

Dr. Qin Xin [Co-Guest Editor]
Full Professor of Computer Science, Faculty of Science and Technology, University of the Faroe Islands, Faroe Islands. Denmark
Dr. Qin Xin graduated with his Ph.D. in Department of Computer Science at University of Liverpool, UK in December 2004. Currently, he is working as a professor of Computer Science in the Faculty of Science and Technology at the University of the Faroe Islands (UoFI), Faroe Islands.

Summary

Dance therapy is a relatively new field of study aimed to address factors concerning the mental health of the individuals. It is a well-known fact that physical movements can nourish the mind, soul, and body with more significant enrichments. In general terms, dance therapy enhances the physical, cognitive, and emotional functions of the body with the psychotherapeutic use of dance and body movements. Practically speaking, it provides a broad range of health benefits with an improvement to an individual’s self-confidence, self-esteem, self-consciousness, and numerous other internal factors. As the study of mental health has become more prevalent in today’s scenario, the need to address various mental health concerns such as anxiety, stress, mood disorders, addiction, depression, and eating disorders have gained remarkable importance. While dance therapy forms the ideal solution for the issues mentioned above, it slightly differs from ordinary dance practice sessions, and it helps the client to recover from specific mental disorders through the use of movement and connection.

Further, there is always reliable connectivity between dance therapy and the brain. Dancing influences, the brain activities to a variety of levels. Researchers have proven that regular practice of aerobic exercises can enhance the reasoning abilities of individuals with improved performance. Also, people who suffer from depression can obtain better results when engaged with recreational dance sessions. Besides, dance therapy enhances social bonds and a friendly relationship with the co-dancers. Each activity, movements, and fluidity act like a stimulator that activates the functions of the human brain more productively.  In precise terms, dance therapy is just one way of practice to improve the overall mental well-being of an individual positively. However, this alone cannot solve every aspect of mental health. Indeed, it requires greater enhancements to the present-day methodologies. Hence this special issue aims to explore advances in dance therapy for mental health. This special issue provides a supportive space for the researchers to discover distinct types of dance therapy approaches to deal with varying human emotions and mental disorders. We welcome researchers and practitioners from science, arts, and psychology to present novel and innovative solutions against this background.

 

The topics of interest for the special issue include, but not limited to, the following:

1) New trends in dance therapy for mental and neural health

2) Dance therapy for social and psychological well-beings of the humans

3) Advances in dance therapy to deal with stress and anxiety management

4) Advances in dance therapy to deal with eating disorders

5) Advances in dance therapy for neuroscience

6) Advances in psychology for dance therapy

7) Positive impacts of dance therapy over humans

8) Role of imagination and symbolism development in dance therapy

9) Role of thought reflection and creativity in dance therapy

10) Scope of dance therapy in terms of behavior management and personality development

11) Dance therapy to improve individuals’ performance measures



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