Abstract:
The purpose of this experimental research was to compare the quality of sleep of elderly receiving dance therapy plus manual sleep hygiene and that of elderly receiving manual sleep hygiene alone. The subjects of this study were elderly in the aging club. The 28 elderly were chosen by purposive selection according to the inclusion criteria. They were divided into the experimental group and the control group, each with 14 subjects. The experimental group received dance therapy according to the program of 1 hours per session, three times per week for 6 weeks, altogether 18 times. The data collection instruments consisted of demographic data about the elderly, The Pittsburgh Sleep Quality Index (PSQI), and the dance therapy program. The data were analyzed by SPSS program. The findings of this study revealed that, after the experimental : the post-test sleep quality scores for the experimental group were significantly lower than the pre-test scores (p>0.001), and the experimental group had statistically significantly lower sleep quality scores than the control group (p>0.001) In conclusion, dance therapy could be used for promoting sleep quality in the elderly.