Animal Therapy Purpose, Benefits, and Types

Based in attachment theory, attachment-based therapy helps you explore how your earliest experiences with caregivers taught you to form relationships. MBCT combines cognitive behavioral therapy (CBT) with mindfulness-based stress reduction (MBSR). Exposure therapy helps people overcome their fears by gradually and repeatedly facing them in a controlled way.

Are There Risks with Animal-Assisted Therapy?

Any type of therapist may conduct AAT, including occupational or physical therapists, although when we refer to AAT, we are typically speaking about animal-assisted psychotherapy. Furthermore, the data regarding animal welfare during the intervention lacked in most of the studies. Then, it would be interesting to further deepen this topic, investigating, also, any adherence to specific guidelines.

Table of Contents

She appreciated feel-good touches but was not to be hurt or harassed in any way. If she retreated to her blanket under my desk, it meant she wanted to be left alone. Her blanket was her safe place, and it had to be respected without fail.”Lucky dog,” he said. His father was unknown, his mother struggled with addiction, and he’d done time in foster care and residential treatment. He was impulsive and socially isolated, bullied by others for his small size (at ten, he was the size of an eight-year-old), and he’d been expelled from school for fire-setting. If you are considering establishing an Animal Assisted Therapy or Visitation program, you should determine what criteria are used by the organization that will provide animals to you.

Benefits of Autism Animal-Assisted Therapy

Before enrolling a child in an autism animal-assisted therapy program, it’s important to consider a few factors. This includes understanding the role of different animals in therapy and weighing how long does crack cocaine stay in your system the risks and benefits of this intervention. Equine-assisted therapy (EAT), which involves interaction with horses, has been found to be beneficial for children with ASD on multiple fronts [3].

3. Elderly patients

Animals bring comfort to people, and spending time with animals can make healing faster and easier. Although there is potentially a therapeutic benefit to interactions with any species, only dogs compare to horses in their close and symbiotic relationship with humans. However, in equine therapy, the process of integrating horses into psychotherapy can be very successful for people of all conditions and populations. Horses are often integrated into the therapeutic process because of their innate and uncanny ability to attune themselves to the emotions and body language of humans.

Explore the upsides and downsides of teletherapy to decide if it’s a good fit for you. Art therapy is a type of therapy where people use art-making to help them understand and express their feelings. The editorial team at therapist.com works with the world’s leading clinical experts to bring you accessible, insightful information about mental health topics and trends. Dr. Elizabeth Ruegg is a licensed clinical social worker and a certified animal-assisted psychotherapist in Port Richey, Florida.

This book is a must for anyone who wants to know more about the process behind AAT and the human–animal bond. This book by Dr. Chandler explains human–animal relational theory and how different treatment models can be integrated with AAT. Underneath this parent category, we find animal-assisted activities, animal-assisted education, and animal-assisted therapy. The Professional Association of Therapeutic Horsemanship is a well-established international certifying agency for equine therapy.

When animals are around, not only do people feel better, but they recover faster from medical procedures, such as surgery (UCLA Health, n.d.). While the benefit is emotional and physiological, since it is not formal psychotherapy, it should be considered an animal-assisted activity rather than animal-assisted therapy. Adolescents, in particular, may see a visit to the animal as a socially acceptable reason to attend therapy. Significant amelioration in depressive symptomatology was highlighted in psychiatric inpatients [19] and hospitalized women with at risk pregnancy [33].

Risks of animal-assisted therapy are the same as those of handling or being around animals. Both animals and their handlers must be trained for activity and therapy scenarios. Your therapy might involve cats, dogs, chickens, guinea pigs, horses, pigs – or even fish or birds. Animal-assisted therapy can help with many issues, including anxiety, depression, relationship problems, trauma and eating disorders.

After each canine therapy session, the patients indicated their pain levels on a visual analogue scale that were consistently significantly lower than within the control group that solely received physical therapy [1]. A group of US researchers also investigated the effect of animal therapy as a natural pain reliever. In a pain clinic for adult patients, dog therapy was used while patients were waiting for a doctor’s appointment. Their results showed that the patients who received dog therapy before the visit had significantly reduced pain and anxiety and were calmer and more relaxed [16]. Results confirm that both groups showed statistically significant improvement in all outcome measures, except for depression symptoms in dog therapy group.

1. Four studies evaluated the satisfaction after the intervention and the effects on psychosocial behaviors [8], [22], [24], [25], instead four considered also physiological phenomena [23], [26], [27], [28].
2. Some theorize that the therapy animal works as a “primary love object,” which means that the relationship with the animal serves as a prototype for future interpersonal relationships with humans (Compitus, 2021b).
3. Significant amelioration in depressive symptomatology was highlighted in psychiatric inpatients [19] and hospitalized women with at risk pregnancy [33].
4. Moreover, 17% of these isolates were indistinguishable from the toxigenic microorganisms responsible of the human disease.
5. Before getting approval for therapy use, both the animal and the handler will have to go through various certifications with these groups and organizations.
6. Results confirm that both groups showed statistically significant improvement in all outcome measures, except for depression symptoms in dog therapy group.

Second, the inability to create homogeneous patient groups also made it difficult to detect small but important changes. Third, the current sample size limited the ability to create subgroups of participants. Fourthly, it was not possible to investigate the specific active elements of the dog-assisted therapy within the current experimental design. Choosing the right animal for therapy is crucial to ensure that the child receives the most benefit from the program. Dogs and horses are the most commonly used animals in animal-assisted programs, as indicated by a systematic review.

Keep reading to find out how animal-assisted therapy works and some of its pros and cons. Couples therapy can help at any stage of a relationship, but especially before major life transitions. Schema therapy helps people identify and meet their core needs by changing negative patterns they’ve developed in thinking about themselves and others.

Hospitals are particularly at risk settings, thus introducing animals has to be carefully considered. Various studies explored these risks outlining infections, allergies and animal accidents as major issues [16], [37], [38], [39], [40]. The potential risk of infections was outlined investigating the prevalence of infective agents in animals i drink every night am i an alcoholic used for pet-visitation [17], [44]. These studies outlined the potential risk related not only to typical zoonosis, but also to common human infections as MRSA [17], [44]. However, reviews and guidelines suggested that the implementation of all security precautions could effectively minimize risks [16], [37], [38], [39], [40].

The therapeutic use of animals has been debated for decades, and its use explored in a variety of settings and populations. Evidence based knowledge is essential to implement effective strategies in hospital. This review focused on the use of animal programs for hospitalized patients, and considered the potential risks. Other researchers have found similar patterns of results in their examination of animal-assisted therapy studies.

It should also be noted that although the terms used in the context of animal-assisted intervention are clearly defined, researchers do not use these definitions consistently. In most cases, the boundaries between animal-assisted activity and therapy are blurred, leading to further confusion in interpretation. In addition, it is a common misconception to publish research findings on animal-assisted interventions with home remedies for opiate withdrawal assistance animals, such as guide dogs or seizure dogs [2, 39, 40]. The idea that interacting with animals can heal our broken minds and bodies is certainly appealing, particularly for those of us who love pets. But is there a mismatch between the media coverage of AAT and the evidence that these therapies actually work? To answer this question, I recently surveyed the research literature on the effectiveness of AAT.