Effects of horseriding on post-traumatic stress disorder
Post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) is common in military veterans, and results from the traumatic events they witness during their service.
Social cognitive therapy is used as a therapy to treat PTSD. Research of new interventions to treat PTSD is scarse. In this study, a new way to help treat patients with PTSD was investigated: therapeutic horseback riding (THR).
A group of 57 veterans from the U.S. was willing to volunteer in a randomized trial, of which 29 were enrolled in the trial. 15 were assigned to the horseriding group, and 14 to the waitlist-control group. The waitlist-control group did not begin horseriding until 6 weeks in the trial.
Demographic and health history information and additional outcome measures aimed to gather information on self-coping, emotion regulation, social and emotional loneliness and a PTSD-checklist were used in this study.
After 6 weeks of THR-intervention the veterans had a significant decrease in PTSD symptoms.
The authors state that THR may not be a replacement of the conventional therapies to treat PTSD, but the results show that it could be a good complementary therapy.
Want to read deeper into PTSD? You can find a lot of valuable information on the website of the National Center for PTSD.
> From: Johnson et al., Mil Med Red 5 (2018) 3. All rights reserved to The Author(s). Click here for the online summary.
