Equine-Assisted Therapy for Veterans with PTSD: Manual Development and Preliminary Findings.

摘要: Introduction Equine-assisted therapy (EAT) for post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) has attracted great interest despite lacking empirical support, a manual, and standardized protocol. Our team of experts in EAT PTSD developed an eight-session group treatment protocol (EAT-PTSD) administered it to two pilot groups military veterans assess initial effects. Materials methods We describe the development which was used with veterans. Protocol safety, feasibility, acceptability were assessed by reported adverse events, completion rates, self-rated patient satisfaction. Preliminary data on PTSD, depressive, anxiety symptoms quality life collected pretreatment, midpoint, post-treatment, at 3-month follow up. Results No events recorded. All patients completed treatment, reporting high showed decreases clinician-assessed depressive from pre post-treatment follow-up (medium large effect sizes, d = .54-1.8), similar trends across self-report measures (d 0.72-1.6). In our sample, response remission varied; all some benefit but gains did not persist follow-up. Conclusions This article presents first Highly preliminary results suggest new manualized EAT-PTSD appears safe, well-regarded, well-attended, yielding short-term benefits symptomatology if unclear length effect. Future research should test this alternative more rigorously.