Experimental Models of Weight Cycling: A Narrative Review of Protocol Design and Metabolic Outcomes.

As interest has grown in integrated approaches to health that attend to both physical and psychological well‐being across diverse groups, dance has increasingly been examined for its therapeutic value. Existing reviews, however, have largely addressed this topic from relatively narrow and separate perspectives. Some reviews focus on dance's impact on physical function rehabilitation [, , , , , , ], examining outcomes such as motor improvement [, , , , , , , , ], and cardiovascular health [, ]. Others situate dance within broader categories, such as the arts [, , , , , , , , , , ], mind−body therapies [], creative activities [], or physical activity [, ], with some even conducting economic evaluations of arts intervention []. In addition, a subset of reviews provides a broad historical overview of dance/movement therapy as a field [, ]. Existing review literature has undoubtedly advanced the understanding of dance in relation to health and well‐being. However, this literature has grown in disconnected silos, often organized around specific populations, diagnoses, or intervention traditions rather than around shared conceptual and methodological questions. As a result, an important problem remains insufficiently addressed: not only whether dance‐based interventions are beneficial, but how dance is being defined, what counts as effectiveness, and whether prevailing measurement approaches are adequate for capturing dance as an embodied, relational, and artistic practice. Even where reviews report positive effects, it often remains unclear whether differences across findings reflect true variation in intervention impact or deeper inconsistencies in intervention description, outcome framing, and review logic. Furthermore, to date, no umbrella review has focused specifically on dance as a core intervention for mental health outcomes. While Ciacchella et al. [] included dance in their umbrella review, they treated it as one of many activities, without isolating its unique contribution or examining dance‐specific mechanisms and modalities. This study is not a second‐order meta‐analysis of intervention effects. Rather, it is a comprehensive, quality‐sensitive umbrella review that synthesizes review‐level evidence to examine conceptualization, measurement practices, population and outcome patterns, and evidence fragmentation in dance‐based mental health research. This umbrella review, therefore, aims to move beyond a simple summary of positive or negative outcomes. It examines how dance‐based interventions for mental health are defined and categorized across the review literature, how effectiveness is conceptualized and measured, what evidence patterns emerge across populations and moderators, and what conceptual and methodological limitations continue to weaken the field. By synthesizing 90 reviews across diverse traditions, this study seeks to clarify not only the current evidence base but also why that evidence remains fragile and uneven. The review is guided by the following research questions.