Salsa dancing can ease depressive symptoms in young adults, randomized trial finds

Young adults with depressive symptoms might benefit from learning how to salsa dance. A new trial published in Psychological Medicine indicates that an eight-week salsa dance program reduced depressive symptoms and social anxiety in young people compared to a waitlist control group. The research provides evidence that social movement activities could offer an accessible and engaging way to support youth mental health.

Depression in young adults, typically defined as those between the ages of 18 and 25, is a growing health concern. According to a 2021 meta-analysis, the onset of mental health conditions peaks during adolescence and early adulthood, with a large proportion of cases emerging before age 25.

Despite this early onset, young people are often less likely to seek treatment. When they do, they tend to drop out of therapy more frequently than older adults. Many existing therapies adopt generic approaches that some young adults feel do not align with their specific needs or daily realities.

The research team, led by Brennan Delattre, a doctoral researcher in the Department of Psychiatry at the University of Oxford, set out to see if social dance could help young adults with depression. “Depression most often begins between the ages of 15 and 25, yet young adults are under-represented in treatment research and are more likely to drop out of treatment once they start compared to older adults,” Delattre told PsyPost.

Young people also report high levels of social isolation and loneliness, which act as both triggers for depression and barriers to recovery. “Waiting times for mental healthcare can also be long, and longer waiting times can correspond to worse treatment outcomes,” Delattre added. “Especially for young people, we wanted to investigate something accessible and enjoyable that young people would see as ‘for them’ and that might target mood and social connection at the same time.”

Physical activity is known to improve mental well-being. For example, a meta-analysis covered by PsyPost in 2024 found that various forms of exercise, including yoga and strength training, help reduce depressive symptoms.

Social dance, which combines physical exertion with continuous social interaction, could offer unique benefits. Learning to dance in a group setting involves cooperation, nonverbal communication, and a shared sense of accomplishment.

Before launching the trial, the researchers consulted with an Oxford-based youth advisory group, which included young people with and without lived experience of depression and anxiety, through a Patient and Public Involvement process to determine which style of dance would be most appealing. “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.

To test the effects of the intervention, the researchers recruited 121 individuals between the ages of 18 and 24. These participants all reported mild to moderately severe symptoms of depression based on a screening questionnaire.

The participants were randomly assigned to either an experimental group or a waitlist control group. The experimental group was asked to attend at least six out of eight weekly salsa dance classes hosted by local university dance societies in Oxford.

These classes were taught by experienced instructors and included regular attendees who were not part of the research, allowing the participants to blend in naturally. The waitlist group completed the same assessments but had to wait 12 weeks before being offered the chance to take the dance classes.

Throughout the study, participants completed several questionnaires tracking their mental health. The primary measure was a standard assessment that asks individuals how often they have experienced depressive symptoms, such as low mood or loss of interest in activities, over the past two weeks.

The researchers also tracked changes in generalized anxiety, social anxiety, loneliness, and how much pleasure participants derived from social interactions. Finally, participants received daily text messages asking them to rate their happiness on a scale from one to ten.

After excluding individuals who dropped out or did not comply with the study requirements, the final analysis included 93 participants. Of these, 49 were in the salsa group and 44 were in the waitlist group.

The researchers found that the salsa dance program had a positive impact on the participants’ mental health. By the end of the 12-week tracking period, those in the salsa group reported lower levels of depressive symptoms compared to the waitlist group.

“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,” Delattre noted. This drop exceeded a common benchmark for clinically meaningful change in depressive symptoms.

“The roughly 2.5-point difference between the groups is larger than the change patients themselves typically notice as meaningful,” Delattre said.

The waitlist group, in contrast, experienced little to no change in their depression scores. The benefit did not differ significantly between participants who started with mild symptoms and those with moderately severe ones.

“Enjoyment of salsa seemed to matter: participants who had more positive experiences in class tended to have lower depressive symptoms,” Delattre pointed out. “The message isn’t that salsa is a cure, but that doing something active, social and genuinely enjoyable can make a real difference to mood, alongside (not instead of) professional care.”

Beyond depression, the salsa group showed a steady decline in social anxiety over the course of the study, while the waitlist group showed barely any change.

Interestingly, the waitlist group experienced a gradual decrease in their ability to enjoy social interactions as the weeks went by. The salsa group did not experience this decline, suggesting that participating in the dance classes may have helped preserve their capacity for interpersonal pleasure.

“I think 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,” she continued. “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?”

Both groups reported decreases in general anxiety and loneliness over time, meaning the salsa group did not improve more than the waitlist group in those areas. However, daily text message ratings showed that the happiness levels of the salsa group rose more steeply over the course of the study than those of the waitlist group.

There are a few things to keep in mind when interpreting these findings. The study utilized a waitlist control group, which can sometimes make an intervention look more effective than it is in reality. Participants assigned to a waitlist might experience disappointment or a drop in motivation, which could worsen their symptoms.

“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,” Delattre cautioned. “Our comparison group was a waitlist, which tells us salsa is better than waiting, but not whether it’s better than another social or physical activity, or than therapy or medication. From these results, salsa looks like a promising option for young people while they wait for care, and potentially alongside other treatments, though that combination still needs to be tested directly.”

Another caveat is that the study focused solely on one type of dance. “This study does not measure or suggest that salsa dancing is more effective than other types of social dance; the same benefits may well apply to them, and that’s worth testing,” Delattre said.

More people dropped out of the salsa group than the waitlist group (17 of 66 who started, versus 2 of 47), and the analysis included only participants who completed the study. If those who left the salsa classes were benefiting less, the results could overstate the effect. Additionally, Delattre taught some of the salsa classes, without pay, and the researcher who collected the data knew which group each participant was in.

Because the study was statistically powered only to measure changes in depression and no corrections were made for testing multiple outcomes, the secondary findings regarding social anxiety, happiness, and social enjoyment should be considered preliminary. Another consideration is selection bias. People who volunteer for a dance study likely already believe that dance will be enjoyable and helpful, and this expectation of improvement can influence the results, though this expectation would apply equally to participants randomly assigned to either group.

The study also relied on self-reported symptoms rather than diagnoses from structured clinical interviews. While the symptom thresholds used are common in community health settings, testing the intervention in a formally diagnosed clinical population would help verify its medical utility.

“I’m presently finishing my doctorate and applying for funding to run larger randomized controlled trials testing social dance under the umbrella of social prescribing within the public healthcare systems like the NHS, compared against active control conditions,” Delattre said of her future plans. “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.’”

Delattre also expressed her gratitude to those who made the research possible. “I’d just like to extend my thanks to the large group of people that generously enabled this study to take place, including local social dance organizations (the Oxford University Salsa Society, Linacre Latin Dance Society and Teddy Hall Latin Dance Society) and their instructors for donating classes, time, and resources, and the study participants who committed their time over the course of twelve weeks to trying something new and responding to personal mental health questions,” she said. “Thank you for your trust, enthusiasm, 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.