NCT05963581: SOMA

Oxford Social Movement Activation Study

Completed NA Last updated 12 June 2025

What this trial tests

NA trial testing Salsa Dancing in Depression in 121 participants. Completed in 28 February 2024.

Timeline

17 July 2023

Primary endpoint
28 February 2024

28 February 2024

Quick facts

Lead sponsor	University of Oxford
Phase	NA
Status	Completed
Study type	INTERVENTIONAL
Allocation	randomized
Design	parallel
Masking	none
Primary purpose	basic science
Enrollment	121
Start date	17 July 2023
Primary completion	28 February 2024
Estimated completion	28 February 2024
Sites	1 location across United Kingdom

Drugs / interventions tested

• Salsa Dancing

Conditions studied

• Depression — all drugs for Depression →
• Low Mood — all drugs for Low Mood →
• Depressive Disorder — all drugs for Depressive Disorder →
• Mood Disorders — all drugs for Mood Disorders →

Sponsor

University of Oxford

Who can join

Adults 18 to 24, any sex, with Depression or Low Mood. Patients with the condition only — healthy volunteers not accepted.

Sponsor's own description

For adolescents and young people particularly, there is need for better and more readily available treatments for depression and low mood. Comparatively less work has been done to characterize and treat depression specifically in young people. Previous literature indicates that often the unaddressed or under-addressed mental health difficulties in youth perseverate into adulthood and contribute to a host of individual and communal difficulties throughout the lifespan. Specifically, if depression goes unaddressed in young adulthood, the likelihood of a chronic course and multiple relapses or recurrences is much higher.

In the present research, we seek to investigate the potential efficacy of a novel intervention for young people with low mood. Depression disrupts social functioning, and social connectedness is especially important during adolescence for healthy development. Within a growing body of literature, social dance has been linked to social and mental health benefits along the dimensions of those disrupted in depression. We hypothesize that social dance might preferentially and efficiently target the goals of addressing loneliness, closeness, and enjoyment in young people compared to other approaches to the treatment of low mood and depression in a way that could lead to mood improvements.

Specifically, we are interested in the impact of a social movement-based activity, salsa dancing, on young peoples' mood and social and emotional processing. Social and emotional processing (SEP) tasks, such as emotional facial recognition and memory for emotional words, have been demonstrated to correspond with early changes that can be predictive of mood changes and treatment efficacy downstream. Including SEP tasks in this research will help to elucidate the potential mechanisms underlying mood improvements, should social dance correspond to improved mood in participants.

The present research seeks to:

1. Aim 1: Investigate the effect of a social dance intervention on low mood. This will be assessed by administering psychological questionnaires to participants before, during, and after the study course of social dance sessions. In particular, we hypothesize that participants will experience reductions in low mood (assessed via the PHQ-9) following the social movement intervention as compared to a waitlist control.
2. Aim 2: Characterize any early social and emotional processing changes that correspond to social dance versus a waitlist control. This will be assessed via social and emotional processing task performance before, during, and following the social movement sessions. We anticipate that improvements in social and emotional functioning as demonstrated via one or several of these tasks will assist in elucidating the possible mechanisms responsible for mood improvement from social movement.
3. Aim 3: Characterize any social interaction difference from pre to post intervention that correspond to the social dance versus waitlist condition. This will be assessed via a version of the trust game before and following the social movement sessions and waitlist control. We anticipate seeing more disrupted trust behavior prior to the intervention or control conditions and less disrupted trust behavior following salsa dancing classes, but not the waitlist control.

In this randomized controlled trial, participants in the experimental group will complete six to eight sessions of social movement (salsa dance) classes within an eight-week period, and complete psychological questionnaires and tasks before, during, and after these eight weeks. Their scores will be compared with those of a control group that will participate in an active waitlist condition.

If the present study suggests that social movement benefits young people with low mood, it could form the basis for investigating a potential new cost-effective, non-invasive, accessible intervention that could be made available to young people.

Publications & conference data

No peer-reviewed publications indexed yet for this trial. Completed trials usually publish results within 12-18 months.