Palmer Research Symposium: Animal Assisted Therapy

I went to the 11:00-11:15 presentation titled “Animal Assisted Therapy” that was presented by DeRae Bettin, Sara Schrank, Emily Grabow, and Trisha Beaulieu. They wanted to see if therapy was more effective with the use of animals rather than simply having regular therapy sessions. In their research, they found that patients who had animals in their therapy sessions generally were happier and were more responsive. This was especially true of geriatrics. During therapy sessions, animals such as dogs would be brought in with the patient, and often times, the patients felt more comfortable with the animals around. In some cases, the patients would not be talkative to humans, but when animals were present, they would find themselves communicating to the animal because the animals were less threatening. The presenters wanted to show that animal assisted therapy was a good idea and that it should be accepted as therapeutic treatment. The main problems associated with the idea was that in some cases, the animals experienced stress being used for therapy, so the animal’s health would have to go into consideration before they were used in the therapy sessions. Another hazard to consider would be to make sure patients did not have any allergies or health concerns that would be triggered by the presence of animals. Overall, this was a very good presentation, and I thought it was a really interesting concept. I definitely would love to have therapy with animals. :)