A new randomised controlled trial from the University of Oxford’s Department of Psychiatry has found that something as unassuming as an eight-week salsa programme can meaningfully ease depressive symptoms in young adults. The study, run with Oxford Health NHS Foundation Trust and published in Psychological Medicine, recruited 121 participants aged 18 to 24 with mild to moderately severe depression, splitting them between salsa classes and a waitlist. By the end of the trial, those who danced showed a drop in symptoms equivalent to a 2.45-point shift on the PHQ-9 scale, along with reduced social anxiety and a steadier rise in daily happiness.
For Khushali Gala, a counselling psychologist who runs a private practice called Antarsoya Therapy alongside her clinical work under a neurologist, the findings track closely with what she has observed in her own sessions, including weekend dance-movement therapy workshops and group work with mothers and couples. “In my clinical experience, the structure of partner dance does lower social anxiety in session, definitely. Not only just social anxiety but all types of anxiety,” she says
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Gala’s explanation begins with the biology of two people learning a step in tandem. “When two people are dancing together, their mirror neurons get activated,” she says. “And when mirror neurons get activated, you build a sort of connection between the two and you start synchronising between the two, and then that makes your overall stress levels go down and you feel more at pace with the other person.” She points to touch itself as part of the effect, describing hand-holds and closeness as contributing to the same calming shift, alongside what she calls “some sort of sensual reconnection” that sits next to the emotional one in a dance like salsa.
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There is also a trust component built into the choreography, she notes, since salsa asks one partner to lead and the other to follow, including through lifts. “You build trust with the other person because salsa also includes some sort of surrender,” Gala says. “You trust the person that they lead you.”
Beyond the interpersonal piece, Gala argues dance works on the body’s stress response directly. Anxiety and panic, she explains, tend to push the nervous system into a sympathetic, fight-or-flight state that leaves muscles stiff; movement of almost any kind, dance included, helps release that tension and bring cortisol down. She has used partner-based exercises such as mirroring, and simple prompts like holding hands or tapping specific body parts, in her work with mothers, couples and children, saying this kind of touch can help release tension held in particular areas of the body — what she refers to as trigger points from past experience, including abuse, when approached gradually and in a setting that feels safe.
Screening and consent matter before the steps do
Gala is careful to frame partner dance as something that has to be introduced with care rather than offered as a blanket fix. Drawing a comparison with exposure-based approaches like CBT and ERP, she describes a graded process: a student might start simply getting comfortable with eye contact, then with knowing a partner, before any touch is introduced at all, and progressing to more contact only once earlier stages feel manageable
Some initial discomfort or masking of anxiety is expected along the way, she says, but consent has to be established at every stage, alongside a clear sense of how much touch a participant is comfortable with and whether they carry prior experiences, such as bullying or sexual abuse, that would call for a slower pace. Moving too quickly, particularly with someone who finds closeness triggering, “would backfire,” she warns
Asked how much of an improvement over an eight-week salsa course she would credit to the dancing itself, Gala puts the figure at 60 to 70 per cent
The Oxford researchers themselves are measured about what the results show. The study did not use clinically diagnosed participants or an active control group, and the authors describe further research as necessary
Lead author Brennan Delattre said the appeal lies partly in salsa’s combination of physical, social and musical elements within a predictable framework of steps and partner rotation, which “may make social contact feel more manageable than an unstructured social group setting.”
Co-author Professor Susannah Murphy said the trial was designed to test an intervention young people had a hand in shaping, rather than one built for them from the outside, calling social dance a possible addition to “a broader toolkit for supporting young people’s mental health alongside existing treatments.”
