Can dancing alleviate depression? A groundbreaking study by Noetel et al. (2024) in the BMJ suggests so! It analyzed 218 randomized controlled trials and found that dancing is one of the most effective forms of exercise for combating depression. 🎶 Why? It combines mood-lifting music, social support from being in a group, and physical activity – all of which are boosts for mental health! 🕺
But a word of caution: The findings are based on a small number of studies, primarily involving women, and could be influenced by outliers. Therefore, it is worthwhile to look closely at the individual studies. Nevertheless, dancing is promising – and the study reminds us to carefully examine research findings. Even more exciting insights can be found in the video. __________________
Studies (just a small selection):
Barranco-Ruiz, Y., & Villa-González, E. (2020). Health-related physical fitness benefits in sedentary women employees after an exercise intervention with Zumba Fitness®. International Journal of Environmental Research and Public Health, 17(8), 2632.
Domene, P. A., Moir, H. J., Pummell, E., Knox, A., & Easton, C. (2016). The health-enhancing efficacy of Zumba® fitness: An 8-week randomised controlled study. Journal of Sports Sciences, 34(15), 1396-1404.
Fountoulakis, K. N., & Möller, H. J. (2011). Efficacy of antidepressants: a re-analysis and re-interpretation of the Kirsch data. International Journal of Neuropsychopharmacology, 14(3), 405-412.
Kirsch, I. (2015). Antidepressants and the placebo effect. Zeitschrift für Psychologie.
Noetel, M., Sanders, T., Gallardo-Gómez, D., Taylor, P., del Pozo Cruz, B., Van Den Hoek, D., … & Lonsdale, C. (2024). Effect of exercise for depression: systematic review and network meta-analysis of randomised controlled trials. BMJ, 384.
Norouzi, E., Hosseini, F., Vaezmosavi, M., Gerber, M., Pühse, U., & Brand, S. (2020). Zumba dancing and aerobic exercise can improve working memory, motor function, and depressive symptoms in female patients with Fibromyalgia. European Journal of Sport Science, 20(7), 981-991.
Kumaat, N. A., Rusdiawan, A., Dafun JR, P. B., Wahyudi, H., Arfanda, P. E., Wijaya, F. J. M., … & Artanty, A. (2025). Comparative effects of Zumba and Yoga on stress, body satisfaction, and self-esteem in working women: a randomized control trial. Pedagogy of Physical Culture and Sports, 29(3), 160-171.
About the Author: Eskil Burck is a psychological advisor and textbook author. He teaches psychology for Kalaidos University of Applied Sciences (Zurich). His psychology podcast "psychologie-lernen.de" consistently ranked #1 on iTunes in the "Education" category. His books "Angst - was hilft wirklich ...?", "Das manipulierte Gehirn" and "Neue Psychologie der Beeinflussung" became Amazon bestsellers. Even in his spare time, he enjoys reading studies...😅🙈 For more information, visit: www.learningpsychology.net
Take a quick look at the following
surprising research results. It's a
comparison between different
interventions against depression. And
what you can see at first sight is that
there is a surprise winner. The ranking
is led by dancing. Dancing seemed to be
the most effective treatment against
depression in this gigantic meta
analysis that has been published in the
British Medical Journal and in which 218
single studies were analyzed with more
than 14,000 participants and at first
sight indeed dancing seemed to be much
better than a psychotherapy much better
than other sports related interventions
like jogging yoga strength training tai
chi Chi gong or cycling but it also seem
to be three times more effective if we
just take a look at the effect sizes
than
anti-depressants. So the standard
medication against depression. So what
the heck is going on? First of all, why
were the anti-depressants in this study
so weak? In fact, it's not a surprise
because we've seen hundreds of studies
in which anti-depressants were not much
better than placebo pills. Indeed, about
twothirds of the effects of
anti-depressants can be explained by the
placebo effect. But in defense of
anti-depressants, we also have to keep
in mind that those studies usually have
a high methodological quality. So
usually those are double blind
randomized controlled trials. So neither
the participants nor the doctors who are
giving out the medications know who is
getting the medication, who is getting
the anti-depressant and who is getting
the placebo pill. And in this way it's
much better, much more easy to control
for artifacts like placebo effects. And
this is not the case or very difficult
with other interventions like for
example a psychotherapy or a dance
intervention or a jogging intervention
against depression. Usually the
participants know that they are getting
the active treatment and therefore in
all these interventions a good deal of
the placebo effect is still present and
this is something you have to keep in
mind. But this does not explain why
dancing is leading the ranking. Why is
dancing better than other intervention
or seems to be better than uh
psychotherapy or other sports
interventions? And even though dancing
surely is a very good intervention
because you have to move your body and
uh usually it's uh in a dancing class.
So you get social support, maybe you
find new friends and you move your body
to music. And we know from many studies
that music is something that can improve
your mood as well. So there's good
reasons to believe why dancing is a good
intervention. On the other hand, this is
something what the scientists say
themselves as well. You have to keep in
mind that the empirical evidence for
dancing at the moment is still quite
low. So for this meta analysis for
example there were just five studies on
dancing whereas for for example for
walking and jogging there were 10 times
more studies and uh in fact there were
51 studies um on walking or jogging and
if there are only five studies there is
a quite huge chance that the average
effect can be driven by an extreme
value. So if you find in one study a
very high effect size, the average
effect can be driven by this high effect
size. And this is exactly what is going
on. If we take a look at those five
studies, we see that four of them have
quite usual um small moderate effect
sizes whereas one study has a gigantic
effect size which is of course driving
the average effect. And therefore it's
it makes a lot of sense to take a look
at what is going on in this study with
this gigantic effect size. And in this
study 60 women were the participants.
And one group of them had to dance or
was allowed to dance in a Zumba dancing
class for 60 minutes three times a week
for about 12 weeks. So in fact quite an
intense interventions. Um, if you keep
in mind that for example psychotherapy
usually it's just once a week. This
dancing intervention was three times a
week, one hour and for a duration of 12
weeks. What's quite surprising about
this study and what makes me a little
bit skeptical is that they did not have
any dropout. So all the participants
finished the study completely. So there
was nobody and
This is really uncommon because
especially when there are participants
with depression, some of them say at
some point in time, it's really too
hard. I cannot keep up any longer. I
can't do this any longer. I have private
problems. I had don't have the
motivation. But in this study, to my
surprise, all of the participants
finished the study to the end. And
another thing that makes me a little bit
skeptical is that this study was
conducted in the Iran. Unfortunately, up
to this point I've seen several studies
that were conducted in the Iran that
could not be
replicated. Um so I at this point in
time with this evidence I guess we
should really be quite careful. Dancing
for sure is a very good intervention but
with this evidence base we cannot say
that it is the best intervention against
depression. we still need much bigger
studies. And something else we have to
keep in mind is that most of the studies
were conducted with women. So 88% of the
participants in these five studies of
this meta analysis in fact were women
with an average age of 31 years. And the
big question of course is whether those
results can be generalized to other
populations especially to men. And if I
think about myself and about my
feelings, if I have to dance, I it's not
the intervention for me. But uh um in
fact, sometimes I feel very awkward. And
I don't know if it's the right
intervention for all men, but maybe
after some warming up and getting used
to it, it still might be a great
intervention. Nevertheless, this
metanolus has another very interesting
lesson for us which is first of all that
sports interventions are quite
effective. In fact, in this metanolus
sports interventions were quite
comparable to a
psychotherapy. And what they also found
was that the more intense the
interventions were like for example
interval training or fast running, fast
jogging, the effect sizes, the mood
lifting effects of these interventions
were much stronger. So um those
interventions were much much more
effective than for example hearta yoga
or slow walking and this is something we
can take home if you want the huge the
best effect out of sports interventions
like dancing like running um like
strength training um the more intense
you can make it the stronger the effects
will be probably because you get the
feeling of self-efficacy you get the
feeling I really challenged myself and I
really made it. And on the other hand,
of course, the sports related positive
effects on our brain like for example,
the release of NGF, the nerve growth
factor or the release of
neurotransmitters probably are much
stronger the more intense the
interventions are. That's it for today.
I hope you enjoyed this episode and if
you want to know more about
psychological science, feel free to take
a look at the website and maybe we will
see next time
