The use of horses to facilitate therapeutic intervention for individuals with special needs has been shown to be uniquely effective. Horses possess enormous symbolic power that represents bravery, loyalty and healing both in popular culture and in mythology (Dunlop and Menka 17). While many researchers show that horse therapy is effective for treating individuals with special needs like autism, arthritis, stroke, cerebral palsy, behavioural disorders as well as psychiatric diseases, there is a need to develop a strong base of evidence. As noted by García-Gómez (1) and Maber-Aleksandrowicz, Cerian and Angela (322), the effectiveness of horse therapy for many of the special needs is not clear, which indicates a need for further research. Therefore, the current study purposes to provide evidence based information regarding horse therapy to the parents and caregivers of individuals with special needs to enable them make informed choices for their loved ones. The main question that the future research will answer is “in individuals with special needs, is horse therapy compared to other therapies effective in improving the outcomes of the patient? This can be answered by comparing the reported experiences of patients that receive the intervention against those of patients that do not receive the intervention.
To achieve the purpose of the research, peer-reviewed articles were sought from Google Scholar database utilizing key phrases and words such as “Horse therapy for special needs”, “effectiveness of horse therapy in individuals with special needs”, “horse therapy” and “indications for horse therapy”. The search was customized to generate articles that were published from 2014 to ensure that only recent articles were considered in this research.to reduce the number of materials used to six, only articles that directly dealt with horse therapy and were published in English were considered. The appropriateness of the articles for this study was decided after reviewing the abstract to confirm its usefulness. Only the first six articles under this criterion were considered.
Hession (19) report that horse riding therapy is essential in stimulating cognition, gait parameters and mood. Hawkins et al. (135) say that horse therapy has been found to be effective for children that have demonstrated deficits in gross motor skills, especially those that suffer from autism spectrum disorder. This form of deficit can hinder the child’s ability to engage in play activities, thereby hindering healthy lifestyles. According to Koca and Hilmi (247) the characteristic horse movements are used to provide carefully graded sensory and motor input. There is an establishment of a foundation to enhance neurological functions as well as sensory processing that can be generalized to different routine activities. According to the authors, the debate regarding horse therapy is on-going among different current scholars who seek to find out how the intervention is effective. Dunlop and Menka (18) show that horse therapy fits into the context of healing intervention since to be successful there is a relationship between the therapist and the patient. Research regarding the topic of horse therapy is not consistent despite the fact that experiences that have been reported by researchers a constructive outcome.
Additional future researches are required to show how horse therapy is effective in improving outcomes of specific conditions and the manner in which healing is achieved. Moreover, further research will be needed to evaluate whether effectiveness of the therapy is affected by the age of the individual with the special need as well as the type of the condition an individual is suffering from.
The thesis statement of the current research is that “in individuals with special needs, horse therapy compared to other therapies is effective in improving the outcomes of the patient.
Works Cited
Dunlop, Katie, and Menka Tsantefski. "A space of safety: Children's experience of equine‐assisted group therapy." Child " Family Social Work 23.1 (2018): 16-24.
García-Gómez, Andrés, Manuel López Risco, Jesús Carlos Rubio, Eloisa Guerrero, and Inés Magdalena García-Peña. "Effects of a Program of Adapted Therapeutic Horse-riding in a Group of Autism Spectrum Disorder Children." Electronic Journal of Research in Educational Psychology 12.1 (2014).
Hawkins, Brent L., Joseph B. Ryan, A. Lynne Cory, and Meredith C. Donaldson. "Effects of equine-assisted therapy on gross motor skills of two children with autism spectrum disorder: a single-subject research study." Therapeutic Recreation Journal 48.2 (2014): 135.
Hession, Caren E., Brian Eastwood, David Watterson, Christine M. Lehane, Nigel Oxley, and Barbara A. Murphy. "Therapeutic horse riding improves cognition, mood arousal, and ambulation in children with dyspraxia." The Journal of Alternative and Complementary Medicine 20.1 (2014): 19-23.
Koca, Tuba Tulay, and Hilmi Ataseven. "What is hippotherapy? The indications and effectiveness of hippotherapy." Northern clinics of Istanbul 2.3 (2015): 247.
Maber-Aleksandrowicz, Sarah, Cerian Avent, and Angela Hassiotis. "A systematic review of animal-assisted therapy on psychosocial outcomes in people with intellectual disability." Research in developmental disabilities 49 (2016): 322-338.
