Rose Schimmel

Date of Award

2022

Document Type

Thesis

Degree Name

Bachelors

Department

Social Sciences

First Advisor

Barton, Michelle

Area of Concentration

Psychology

Abstract

The current study explores whether Dance/Movement Therapy contributes to a perceived higher quality of life in those with Parkinson’s Disease compared to other types of physical activities/therapies. 10 people with Parkinson’s Disease (PD) were recruited from two Sarasota-based Parkinson’s support organizations and were identified as being a part of the Dance/Movement Therapy (n=7) or the Control (n=3) condition. The researcher met with all the participants through Zoom to take an online survey, created by the researcher with questions taken/modified from the PDQ-39 and PDQUALIF, asking about their perceptions on their physical, emotional, and social aspects of quality of life. Additionally, the 7 Dance/Movement Therapy (DMT) participants were interviewed about their personal experience with DMT. All the results were purely descriptive, as there was not enough data to do any inferential statistical analyses. The survey results showed trendlines moving in the direction of improvement in quality of life with longer time in PD-focused physical activity/therapy. Upon further analysis of the survey data, the data suggests a positive relationship between more time in PD-focused physical activity/therapy and better quality of life, as well as an effect of how long ago participants were diagnosed with Parkinson’s Disease. The interview results showed that a majority of participants said “yes” to notice physical, emotional, and social changes that they attributed to Dance/Movement Therapy, with more positive than negative items reported for all three quality of life categories. Finally, all 7 DMT participants said they would recommend DMT to other people with Parkinson’s Disease. It is important to state that definitive conclusions can’t be made with the unexpectedly small sample size, although these hints of data may be worth exploring in future studies.

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