The Therapeutic Effects of Equine-Assisted Psychotherapy

Equine-Assisted Psychotherapy (EAP) involves working on the psychological goals set between the client and the mental health professional. This is done through the experiential interactions between the clients and the horse. This experiential aspect is vital as it allows clients to process the emotions, thoughts and behaviors that were expressed during sessions with the horse.

Simple interactions with the horses that does not necessarily involve any goals being set between the client and the personnel handling the session. These can involve activities such as grooming or petting of the horse.

This group will only be watching movies related to horses and they are told that this is another form of EAP even though this is not the case. This type of intervention has not been known to provide any therapeutic effect relevant to the study and thus is used as the placebo-control.