HOPE AND HEALING WITH THE ART OF EMOTION

Animal-Assisted Play Therapy

Animal-Assisted Play Therapy (AAPT) is a comprehensive integration of play therapy with animal-assisted therapy, primarily for mental health/psychotherapy and educational purposes. It is valuable in helping children, adolescents, and adults and can be provided for individuals, groups, and families.

AAPT is the integrated involvement of animals in the context of Child-Centered Play Therapy (CCPT), in which appropriately-trained therapists and animals engage with child, family, and adult clients primarily in play interventions aimed at improving the client’s psychosocial health, while simultaneously ensuring the animal’s well-being and voluntary engagement in the process. 

The inclusion of horses can help the child feel safe and accepted for who they are. The presence of the horses provides several benefits to the child, including the opportunity for the child to express complex feelings through the horse, receive nurturing from the horse, and receive feedback from the horse to ground the session in reality. In AAPT, the horses are treated like group members, enabling the child to improve social skills while receiving feedback from the horses. The benefits of AAPT include gains in self-control, decision-making, personal responsibility, self-direction, self-expression, self-respect, and self-acceptance.

The AAPT model is facilitated by a treatment team comprised of a play therapist and an equine specialist. There are many considerations to safely, ethically, and effectively integrate the horse into a play therapy session including creating a play area in which horses can be included, adapting CCPT facilitative responses for AAPT, establishing a safe physical and emotional environment for both horse and child, identifying and setting appropriate limits, and attending to group dynamics between the horse and child.