Dance movement therapy for obese women with emotional eating: a controlled pilot study

Objective: This study explored the effectiveness of dance movement therapy (DMT) in obese women with emotional eating who were trying to lose weight. Method: 158 women were recruited from a commercial weight loss programme: 92 with BMI ≥ 28 were identified as emotional eaters and divided into: an exercise control (n=32) and non-exercisers (n=60). The non-exercises were partially randomised to non exercise control (n=30) and treatment group (n=30). Using a pre- and post-intervention design, 24 of the DMT treatment group, 28 of the exercise control and 27 of the non exercise control completed all measures on a battery of tests for psychological distress, body image distress, self-esteem and emotional eating. Findings were analysed for statistical significance. Results: The DMT group showed statistically decreased psychological distress, decreased body image distress, and increased self-esteem compared to controls. Emotional eating reduced in DMT and exercise groups. The authors cautiously conclude that DMT could form part of a treatment for obese women whose presentation includes emotional eating. Discussion: Further research is needed with larger, fully and blindly randomised samples, a group exercise control, longitudinal follow-up, a depression measure, ITT and cost analyses.