The Therapeutic Effects of Equine-Assisted Psychotherapy

Summary

Equine-assisted interventions (EAI) are an emerging form of alternate psychotherapy that has been increasingly found to produce improvements in various treatment outcomes. However, the paucity of randomized-controlled trials (RCTs) in the EAI literature prevents any definitive conclusions to be made about the general effectiveness of EAI. This study tests whether one form of EAI, Equine-Assisted Psychotherapy (EAP), reduces aggression and alters risk factors associated with aggression in young adults, and whether emotion regulation mediates any effect of EAP on aggression. In a single-blind RCT, undergraduate students will be randomly assigned to either an intervention group, an active-control group, or a placebo-control group. Participants in the intervention group will undergo a 5-week EAP program consisting of structured, interactive activities with horses followed by a clinical processing component. Participants in the active control group will undergo a 5-week program that only involves interactions with horses without any clinical input (i.e. commonly coined as animal-assisted activities). Participants in the placebo-control group will undergo 5 weeks of 1-hour movie sessions related to horses. There will be three waves of data collection measuring key outcome variables - t1 before the 1st session, t2 after the 3rd session, and t3 after the final session. Participants will complete questionnaires assessing the key outcomes of aggression, emotional well-being and academic performance. Other risk factors of antisocial behaviour such as psychopathy, level of empathy, emotion regulation and executive functioning will also be measured. To the author's knowledge, the current study is the first in Singapore to investigate if EAP can lower aggression levels and alter psychological risk factors for aggression in healthy young adults. In turn, these results could help inform the utility and validity of EAP in the forensic populations.

Conditions

• Aggression
• Stress
• Psychopathy
• Empathy

Interventions

BEHAVIORAL

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.

BEHAVIORAL

Equine-Assisted Activities

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.

OTHER

Placebo-control group

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.

Sponsors & Collaborators

• Nanyang Technological University

  collaborator OTHER

• Therapeutic and Educational Riding in Singapore (THERIS)

  collaborator UNKNOWN

• Chua Yi Rong Shawn

  lead OTHER

Principal Investigators

• Olivia Choy, PhD · Nanyang Technological University

• Lim SM Matthew, PhD, PsyD · National University of Singapore

Study Design

Allocation

RANDOMIZED

Purpose

OTHER

Masking

SINGLE

Model

PARALLEL

Eligibility

Min Age

18 Years

Max Age

28 Years

Sex

ALL

Healthy Volunteers

Yes

Timeline & Regulatory

Start

2020-01-20

Primary Completion

2020-04-09

Completion

2020-11-06

Countries

• Singapore

Study Locations