The Nguudu Barndimanmanha Project-Improving Social and Emotional Wellbeing in Aboriginal Youth Through Equine Assisted Learning

Background: Recent statistics have painted a grim picture for Australia's Aboriginal youth, with reports of higher levels of almost every health indicator, including depression, sexual and emotional abuse, unemployment, and incarceration. Traditional western based therapies have proven to have limited effectiveness in engaging this group as they can often be culturally inappropriate. International studies have provided promising results using equine assisted learning, with a sound methodological basis underpinned by Indigenous ways of being and doing. In Australia Aboriginal people have strong historical ties to horses through their work on stations and were often considered some of the country's best horsemen and women. While equine assisted learning programs exist in Australia there are currently none catering specifically to Aboriginal youth, run and staffed by Aboriginal staff and provided in a culturally secure manner.

Aims: Alternative therapy for Aboriginal youth in the areas of grief, loss, and trauma, through an equine assisted learning program that focussed on self-concept, self-regulation, self-awareness, anxiety and depression, and sense of connectedness.

Methods: Participants (N = 270) aged 6–25 years old engaged in a minimum of 6-weeks of equine assisted learning. Each session was 45–50 min duration and occurred on a weekly basis. Sessions were undertaken individually, in pairs and in groups, depending on the needs of the participant and the focus of the session goals. Qualitative examination of the participants included photography to capture the lived experiences of the participants throughout the program. In addition an cultural and age appropriate adaptation of the Strength and Difficulties Questionnaire was trialed to track changes quantitively.

Conclusion: We observed improvements in self-regulation, self-awareness, and socialization skills, evident from the photography recording and the questionnaire data. In addition parent and/or caregiver and teacher reported changes in behavior, self-regulation, and socialization skills were recorded.

Animal-assisted dyadic therapy: A therapy model promoting development of the reflective function in the parent-child bond

Animal-assisted psychotherapy (AAP) inherently incorporates standpoints, interventions, and ways of action promoting the development of the reflective function and mentalization, and thus has special value for parent-child psychotherapy. Two central tools in AAP contribute to this process. The first is the ethical stance of the therapist, who sees the animals as full partners in the therapy situation, respecting them as subjects with needs, desires, and thoughts of their own. The second tool combines nonverbal communication with animals together with the relating, in the here and now, to the understanding and decoding of body language of everyone in the setting. Nonverbal communication in AAP enables access to implicit communication patterns occurring between parent and child. This article provides a survey of theoretical development and research constituting a basis for the development of therapeutic approaches for the improvement of parent-children dynamics, followed by a description of a dyadic therapy model of a mentalization-based treatment originating from a psychoanalytic-relational orientation. Clinical examples are provided to illustrate AAP processes in parent-child psychotherapy (consent was received for examples that were not aggregated).

Amy’s Story: An Existential-Integrative Equine-Facilitated Psychotherapy Approach to Anorexia Nervosa

This article offers an existential-integrative framework to working with anorexia nervosa within an equine-facilitated psychotherapy setting. The discussion provides an overview of how existential-integrative theories can be blended into equine-facilitated psychotherapy and offers an existential-integrative perspective of anorexia nervosa. A case study illustrates the theories behind this blended approach in praxis.