Movement therapy with psychotic adolescents

Abstract

Non-verbal behaviour has long been a focus of attention in the psychiatric literature. Furthermore, most psychiatric hospitals make use of non-verbal therapies in their milieu programmes. These include art, music and dance therapy, and related to the latter, movement therapy. This paper represents the beginning of an attempt to assess more scientifically the effectiveness of movement therapy. It describes the movement therapy programme on our adolescent unit, the evolution of a measuring scale and compares three groups of patients: (A) a group which had received individual therapy; (B) A group which had received group therapy; and (C) a control group. The results tend to confirm the effectiveness of movement therapy for psychotic adolescents.