AUTHOR=Li Jiaxin , Sánchez-García Raúl TITLE=Equine-assisted interventions for veterans with posttraumatic stress disorder: a systematic review JOURNAL=Frontiers in Psychiatry VOLUME=14 YEAR=2023 URL=https://www.frontiersin.org/journals/psychiatry/articles/10.3389/fpsyt.2023.1277338 DOI=10.3389/fpsyt.2023.1277338 ISSN=1664-0640 ABSTRACT=

Equine-assisted intervention therapy has a nearly 60-year history and has been shown to have a significant positive impact on various types of psychotherapy patients. Due to an increase in research on EAT, the number of existing methods of equine-assisted intervention therapy has gradually increased. Based on existing literature on the application of equine-assisted intervention therapy on veterans with post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD), this study examines the characteristics of several types of equine interventions and includes a systematic review of peer-reviewed literature on equine-assisted interventions for veterans with PTSD published over the past 5 years, from 2018 to the present. Ten articles met the review criteria and served as the primary data for analysis. Several types of equine-assisted interventions were shown to have a beneficial psychological impact on veterans. However, some limitations were also found in the studies, such as that the majority of experiments were constrained by small sample sizes. Equine-assisted intervention therapy has been shown to be effective, but further research is merited, in order to focus on the specific details and theories involved in equine-assisted interventions, and on the welfare of the horses involved in the therapy.