Integrative dance/movement psychotherapy and the aging process

Abstract

The objectives of the investigation was reasoning and developing a strategy of implementation of integrative dance/movement psychotherapy in order to improve the life quality and psychosomatic adaptation of an aging person. 25 males and 25 females with some age-related emotional and psychological problems but with no marked mental disorders were examined. Clinical-psychopathological and experimental-psychological methods were used. Target symptoms for integrative dance/movement psychotherapy were determined. A repeated investigation was carried out in three months. The investigation findings show common and distinctive features of female and male psychosomatic state at the climacteric and partial androgenic deficiency period. The model of integrated experiences described elucidates the notion of age-related dissociation, which is a source of the aging persons’ inner conflict leading to the development and/or aggravation of their psychosomatic and social disadaptation. The integrative dance/movement psychotherapy course described results in the considerable improvement of aging persons’ psychophysiological dynamics, social adaptation and life quality.

Keywords:

• integrative dance/movement psychotherapy
• aging process
• climacterium
• partial androgenic deficiency
• age-related dissociation

Acknowledgements

The author thanks the staff of the urological department of the Voronezh City Clinical Hospital «UVGD» and the Head of the Department of Psychiatry and Narcology of the Voronezh N.N. Burdenko State Medical Academy, Professor O.U. Shiryaev, for the opportunity to conduct this investigation.

Notes

1. Psychosomatic disadaptation (PSD) is improper adaptation of the individual to the environment caused by low adaptability or environmental stimuli which are overly powerful for human and can disadapt persons with normal and even high adaptability as well. PSD appears as mental and somatic disorganisation. PSD is a process developing both subclinically (in under-nosological forms) and in the form of nosologically classified diseases. Adaptability is a complex of personal psychophysical resources (innate and acquired) of a certain level which provide the person's readiness to adaptation.

2. Anorexia is a psychopathological disorder accompanied by aversion to food under the impact of weight loss obsession.

3. Bulimia is a pathologically increased, irregular appetite, gluttony, binge eating, unappeasable hunger.

4. Alzheimer's disease is an atypical form of senile dementia developing relatively early in life (in presenile age).

5. Affective disorders (disturbances of mood) are a group of clinical states characterised by disturbance in mood, loss of ability to control one's affects and a subjective sensation of bad illness.

6. Somatisation is a way of pathomorphism of some mental disorders owing to which a somatovegetative component of the disorder starts prevailing in a clinical picture.

7. Sexual dysfunction is any condition preventing a person from having normal sexual intercourse. It can be incomplete erection (erectile dysfunction), accelerated or delayed ejaculation, anorgasmia, or weakened libido.

8. Hypochondriac fixation is excessive concentration, the person's obsession with their health, tendency to notice its slightest (according to the patient's opinion) abnormalities.

9. Panic attacks are episodes of intense anxiety with sudden onset, fear or horror accompanied by vegetative disorders.

10. Sanogenesis represents mechanisms of restoring the disturbed self-regulation of the organism during the disease.