ABSTRACT
This chapter reviews literature regarding physical touch, adolescents, and trauma, describes the implications for adolescents who experience a lack of touch and describes interventions for trauma that utilize touch, including movement and dance therapy. It presents a movement and dance therapy session in a group setting and discusses ethics of using touch for practitioners. Research indicates that touch deprivation in childhood may result in increased aggressive behaviors in adolescence. According to one of the leading contemporary authorities on trauma, the single largest public health challenge in America is probably childhood abuse, etc. Dance/movement therapy is defined as "the psychotherapeutic use of movement to further the emotional, cognitive, physical, and social integration of the individual". There is little information in the clinical literature regarding physical touch and adolescents, yet touch is of crucial importance to human physical and psychological development and functioning. Physically painful touch and lack of nurturing touch are associated with lifelong medical and psychological problems.
