Health professionals say horses can reflect our emotions to
bring relief from addiction and stress.
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| A horse will move away from an angry person and follow someone they trust, says one therapist |
In a Sussex field, a large bay horse is galloping around,
tail held high. This magnificent creature is one of a new army of animals that
is helping therapists to treat everything from addiction to autism to
post-traumatic stress disorder.
Reports show that dogs, already known to be invaluable
helpmates for blind, deaf, diabetic and epileptic owners, were also being
trained to help dementia patients.
Now the psychological benefits of working with horses are
being recognised by growing numbers of therapists who work with autistic
children, young people with behavioural problems, adults with depression or
celebrities with addictions.
"The horse is the
perfect mirror, they are very emotional beings; we're only starting to realise
how intelligent they are," said therapy counsellor Gabrielle Gardner,
of Shine For Life, watching the horse dance around his pen at a
farm in Blackstone, a village a few miles north of Brighton.
"A lot of my
clients start off being very nervous, so I wouldn't always use such a big
horse. One of the reasons I think equine-assisted therapies work so well is
that everyone has a reaction to horses; nobody is indifferent. People either
love them or fear them, so that's two big emotions that immediately reflect
what most of life's issues revolve around. If you can work with an animal like
this and overcome the fear, then it isn't a bad starting point."
Gardner has worked with all types of clients, including
young offenders, and says a horse picks up on the way people are feeling,
mirroring their emotions and responding. As a herd animal attuned to stress and
body language, a horse will move away from an angry person, follow someone it
trusts and be unsettled when it senses fear.
"It's especially
good for people who don't take to talking therapies. Counselling is not a 'one
size fits all'. While you might forget a conversation you had with your
counsellor a few weeks on, it's unlikely you'll forget what happened when you
stood in a field with your counsellor and a horse. It's not like patting a dog;
it's a big animal."
Gardner, who runs sessions for clients alongside a mental
health professional, says the sudden explosion in popularity of horse-based
therapies has been helped by the success of the book and film War Horse and
a TV series that saw Martin Clunes investigate our relationship with the horse.
But another reason is the runaway success of the therapies
in the US. Equine Assisted Growth and Learning Association (Eagala), a
US-based organisation, trained 1,500 therapists in Britain in 2011. Coral
Harrison, from Cumbria, is their regional coordinator for Europe. "We're seeing hundreds of new
inquiries, whereas a few years ago it would be a handful."
Scientific research remains thin on the ground and the
therapy's effectiveness remains mostly anecdotal, although The Priory clinic
offers equine-assisted therapies, while in the US equine-assisted activities
and therapies have attracted celebrity clients including Robert Downey Jr
and Sophie Anderton. American horse trainer Franklin Levinson is
establishing a regular base for his courses in Dorset, working with troubled
children.
"It has been
clinically documented that just being around horses changes human brainwave
patterns. We calm down and become more centred and focused when we are with
horses," he says. "Horses
are naturally empathetic. The members of the herd feel what is going on for the
other members of the herd."
The Horse Boy Foundation - set up by Rupert Isaacson, who
wrote a book about riding in Mongolia with his autistic son - is running a new
program of equine therapy camps this summer for autistic children and their
families in Britain.
Such efforts have the tentative approval of mainstream
scientists. Dr Nicola Martin, an autism expert at the LSE, said she thought
anything that brought children and families together would have a positive
effect.
"It's certainly
not about healing or curing, because autism is for life, but being out in the
countryside, close to nature, doing something enjoyable like interacting with
horses, has got to help families come together."
In Scotland a charity called HorseBack UK is
achieving tremendous results using horses to rehabilitate injured and traumatised
members of the armed forces. Jock Hutcheson, a former marine, had retired to
breed horses when he offered to take a group of former combatants riding.
Self-confessed as "horse daft since
I was three", he said that even he hadn't expected the horses to have
such a huge impact. Last year he had 156 people through his Aberdeenshire
centre.
He said the trick was offering "mobility with dignity". He added: "Soldiers don't make good patients and they don't want pity, but
we want to create a way for them to come back into the world again. The horses
have had an enormous effect on them, empowering."
Using animals as therapy is not new: the Greeks documented
the horse's therapeutic value in 600BC and French physician Cassaign concluded
in 1875 that equine therapy helped certain neurological disorders. Dolphins
were used in the former Soviet Union to treat nervous disorders and rabbits
lower stress levels in American old people's homes.
By the 1950s British
physiotherapists were exploring the possibilities of horse therapy for all
types of disorders. The Riding for the Disabled Association (RDA) was founded in
1969 with the enthusiastic support of the royal family and the Queen still
shows a keen interest in the work of Californian horse whisperer Monty Roberts,
who has been working on bringing horses and troubled children together for
several years.
Whether scientists will ever prove that they offer real
medical value, our love of animals shows no sign of abating. As Churchill said: "There's something, about the outside
of a horse that is good for the inside of a man."
Source: http://www.theguardian.com/society/2012/feb/26/horses-therapists-stress-autism-addiction
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