The objective of this study was to ascertain the impact of social media-based dance therapy in reducing symptoms of depression among evacuees of the Russia–Ukraine war. The participants were randomly assigned to no dance therapy (n = 162) and social media-based dance therapy groups (n = 162). The dance therapy group took part in 12 sessions of dance therapy while the no dance therapy group did not receive any intervention. The result showed that before the dance therapy intervention, participants in both groups reported severe depression symptoms. After the intervention, participants in the dance therapy group dropped from severe depression to normal depression while those in the no dance therapy group dropped to major depression. During the follow-up assessment after 3 months, participants in the no dance therapy group reported moderate depression while those in the dance therapy group still maintained their normal depression classification with a drop in their depression score from 46 to 26. Overall, the result showed that there was a significant main effect of time and the depression score of the participants, F(1,304) 203.143, p = 0.001, eta = 0.401. No interactive effect of gender and the impact of the treatment on reduction in depression symptoms was detected, F(1,304) 3.232, p = 0.073. However, there was a significant main effect of treatment condition on depression symptoms, F(1,304) 495.023, p = 0.001. We highlighted the implication of these results on health promotion.

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Funmilayo Ranco was a radical self-proclaimed feminist in 1960s Nigeria. As the only female actor-manager in the professional Yoruba traveling theatre, she upended the conventions of the popular form’s opening and closing glee entertainments to assert her complex gender expression.

This is a study of two plays that are based on the abduction of 276 schoolgirls from Chibok Girls’ Secondary School by the Boko Haram insurgents. The plays, Preamble to Apocalypse by Fidelis Okoro (2016) and Embers by Soji Cole (2018), are here treated as a narrative continuum, which tracks the girls' abduction from their school to the Sambisa Forest, to the IDP Camps, and culminate in their degeneration into suicide bombers. The concepts of halfway house and purgatory are used to equate both the intended and the actual experiences of the girls, and sexual objectification theory is employed to underscore the causes of the traumatic experiences of the girls and argues that their radicalization is due more to their disillusionment with the government than with Boko Haram. There are three categories of characters in the plays - the abductors (villains), the rescuers (heroes), and the females (victims). However, as the narrative progresses, the line between terrorism and heroism blurs. The boundary between villainy and victimhood collapses. Apart from a close reading of the selected texts, the paper also draws supporting data from media reports that validate the literary accounts.

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