A university-led trial in Oxford has found that an eight‑week salsa dance programme can reduce depressive symptoms and social anxiety in young adults with mild to moderately severe depression, compared with a waitlist control.
The study recruited 121 participants aged 18 to 24 who reported mild to moderate depressive symptoms, with 93 completing the study and being analysed. Participants were randomly allocated to either an experimental group that attended salsa classes or a waitlist control group.
Before the trial, researchers engaged with an Oxford-based youth advisory group to decide which dance style would appeal most. “These young people watched videos of salsa dancing, cèilidh dancing, capoeira, and cooperative movement games and their feedback indicated that they thought salsa dance would be the most enjoyable and acceptable to their peers,” Delattre explained.
The intervention involved at least six of eight weekly salsa dance classes run by local university dance societies in Oxford, taught by experienced instructors and incorporating regular attendees who were not part of the research.
Primary outcome measures centred on depressive symptoms, assessed with a standard instrument asking about experiences over the past two weeks. Secondary measures included general anxiety, social anxiety, loneliness, and the degree of pleasure derived from social interactions. Participants also received daily text messages asking them to rate their happiness on a scale from one to ten.
Among those who completed the study, 49 were in the salsa group and 44 in the waitlist group. By the end of the 12‑week monitoring period, the salsa group reported lower depressive symptoms than the waitlist group on the PHQ‑9, a widely used depression questionnaire. Delattre noted that “on the Patient Health Questionnaire (PHQ-9), a standard 0–27 depression questionnaire used in healthcare practices, the salsa group’s scores fell by about three points on average, while the waitlist group’s changed by less than one,” a difference described as clinically meaningful.
“The roughly 2.5‑point difference between the groups is larger than the change patients themselves typically notice as meaningful,” Delattre said.
Beyond depression, the salsa group showed a steady decline in social anxiety, whereas the waitlist group showed little change. The waitlist group, by contrast, experienced a gradual decline in the ability to enjoy social interactions over time, an effect not seen in those who danced.
“The most surprising finding of this study was that over the 12 weeks, young people in the waitlist group showed a worsening in social anhedonia, meaning reduced ability to enjoy, or feelings of reward from, social interactions, whereas those in the salsa classes did not,” Delattre told PsyPost. “This didn’t statistically explain the improvement in depressive symptoms, possibly because participants started out at very different levels of interpersonal pleasure to begin with. But it raises an interesting question for future research: could social dance help protect people’s capacity to enjoy social connection while they’re struggling with low mood?”
Although both groups reported reductions in general anxiety and loneliness, the researchers found that happiness ratings—measured via daily texts—rose more steeply in the salsa group than in the waitlist group.
Delattre cautioned that the waitlist design can exaggerate apparent effects, noting that “statistically, it’s a large effect, but comparisons against a waitlist tend to produce bigger effects than comparisons against another activity, so the fairest summary is that there was a noticeable, clinically meaningful improvement in the salsa group compared to the waiting group that justifies conducting larger studies in the future.” She added that the current comparison shows salsa is better than waiting, but not necessarily better than other activities or standard treatments.
Limitations include that the trial used only one type of dance and relied on self‑reported symptoms. The researchers acknowledged potential bias from the fact that some salsa classes were taught by Delattre and the data collector knew which participants were in which group. The study was powered for depressive symptoms, with secondary outcomes treated as exploratory.
Looking ahead, Delattre intends to pursue funding for larger randomized controlled trials testing social dance within social prescribing in public health systems such as the NHS, comparing it against active control conditions. “In the long term, I’d like to evaluate social dance and other creative interventions for mental health across different populations internationally, and across different definitions of what it means for an intervention to ‘work,’” she said.
The researchers thanked local organisations and instructors for donating classes, time and resources, and acknowledged the participants for their time, vulnerability and feedback. The study, “The effects of a salsa dance intervention in young people with mild to moderately severe depressive symptoms,” was authored by Brennan Delattre, Joshua E.J. Buckman, Catherine J. Harmer, and Susannah E. Murphy.
