Present society is in very hard situation to recover humanity and to adapt to social changes, caused by rapid improvement of technology and domination by logic of global economic environment. In consequence of that, contemporary people are exposed to ...
Present society is in very hard situation to recover humanity and to adapt to social changes, caused by rapid improvement of technology and domination by logic of global economic environment. In consequence of that, contemporary people are exposed to stresses from aging, physical change, and inner conflict of unstable ego, without adaptations to changing of human relations and values. According to Korean Educational Association of Integrative Medicine(KEAIM), one in five Korean people has depression. Among many solutions to treat those mental problems, the worship dance as a sort of performing art therapy, can be expected to make positive effects on mental health like depression and self-esteem. So, the purpose of this study was to propose a theoretical basis for worship dance to be an alternative program to improve middle-aged women`s life quality, with investigation of the influences of worship dance program on depression and self-esteem of them.
For that purpose, 30 middle-aged christian women(in age from 35 to 50) were selected from churches in Seoul, and 15 were classified to experimental group and the others to controled group. To measure middle-aged women`s depression and self-esteem, questionnaires translated by Jang Dong-San(1998) and Choi Joon-Goo(2008) from Zung & Durham(1965)`s self rating scale for depression, and translated by Jeon Byeong-Je(1974) from Rosenberg(1965)`s self-esteem scale which was verified by Curboy & somerfield(1991) were modified and used for this study. To investigate the influences of worship dance program, from pre and post-test on depression and self-esteem of treatment with 16 times worship dance program, the changes of depression and self-esteem of experimental and controled group were compared and analysed, and, the results as follows were gathered.
First, depression of middle-aged women with worship dance program was significantly reduced in every sub factor like emotional, cognitive, behavioral, and physical factor. But in controled group, every sub factor of depression had no significant difference. So, it was confirmed that worship dance program had positive influence on reduction of middle-aged women`s depression.
Second, in self-esteem of middle-aged women with worship dance program, positive self-esteem, a sub factor of self-esteem, was significantly improved, and negative self-esteem was significantly reduced. But in controled group, there was no significant difference. So. it was confirmed that worship dance program had positive influences on middle-aged women`s self-esteem by improving positive self-esteem and reducing negative one.
To sum those results up, it was confirmed that worship dance program had positive influences, psychologically, by reducing depression and improving self-esteem. So, on the basis of this study, if worship dance program would be applied to various mental therapy programs with dance, then that could be more helpful programs. And also, it was thought that, as a sort of movement education method for reduction of depression and improvement of self-esteem of middle-aged women, if worship dance program would be used for spiritual maturity of christian and life quality improvement to middle-aged women, then that could be a useful therapy method for contemporary people with stresses from mental problems.