Richard Coaten is a Dancer & Dance Movement Psychotherapist with the South West Yorkshire Partnership NHS Foundation Trust, employed part‐time. He runs a Dance
Movement Psychotherapy Service with the Day Services Liaison Team in Calderdale and on an Acute Assesment & Treatment Ward at Calderdale Royal Hospital. An experienced arts psychotherapist, dancer, arts/health worker and trainer, he is a leading UK specialist in movement and dance based work with older people with neuro‐degenerative conditions, especially dementia syndrome. He has a doctoral thesis on, ‘Dance Movement Psychotherapy and Dementia’ from Roehampton University, and recognises the need to develop the evidence base for bio‐psychosocial approaches.
The training of dancers, care staff and others in the fields of embodiment, embodied practices and nonverbal communication are a priority. He has also been pioneering the use of folkloric music and dance traditions with people with dementia in Athens and Istanbul (2013/14). He has published work in the form of papers, articles and chapters in books, and in 2010 as a Churchill Fellow spent a month in Toronto, Vancouver and the Rockies, disseminating his researches and working with leading specialists and researchers in the field.