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Injury, imagery, and self-esteem in dance healthy minds in injured bodies?

  • Sanna M. Nordin-Bates
    ,
  • Imogen J. Walker
    ,
  • Jo Baker
    ,
  • Jocelyn Garner
    ,
  • Cinzia Hardy
    ,
  • Sarah Irvine
Research Output: Contribution to journal Article Peer-review

Open access

Abstract

The purpose of this study was to investigate a selection of psychological variables (help-seeking behaviors, mental imagery, self-esteem) in relation to injury among UK dancers. We recruited 216 participants from eight dance styles and six levels of involvement. It was found that 83.5% of the participants had experienced at least one injury in the past year. The most common response to injury was to inform someone, and most continued to dance when injured, albeit carefully. Physical therapy was the most common treatment sought when an injury occurred (38.1%), and dancers seemed to follow recommendations offered. Injured and non-injured dancers did not differ in their imagery frequencies (facilitative, debilitative, or injury-related) and scored similarly (and relatively high) in self-esteem. Neither facilitative nor debilitative imagery was correlated with self-esteem, but dancers who engaged in more facilitative imagery in general also reported doing so when injured. Altogether, it appears that injury is not related to dancers' self-esteem or imagery, at least not when injuries are mild or moderate. Even so, such conclusions should be made with caution, given that most dancers do sustain at least one injury each year.

Publication Information

Output type

Research Output: Contribution to journal Article Peer-review

Original language

English

Pages from-to (Number of pages)

Pages 76-85

Journal (Volume, Issue Number)

Journal of Dance Medicine and Science (Volume 15, Issue 2)

Publication milestones

  • Published - 01/06/2011

Publication status

Published - 01/06/2011

ISSN

1089-313X

External Publication IDs

  • handle.net: 10547/295988
  • Scopus: 79960877491

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