Investigating the Effectiveness of Equine-assisted Therapy on Children Regardless of Their Mental Disorder

Abstract

Equine-assisted therapy (EAT) is a common and popular complementary and alternative therapy among children with different mental disorders. In this study, the effectiveness of EAT was investigated on children with diverse mental disorders by analyzing their gait. Fifty-six children (age: 8.30 ± 3.77 years) were involved in the research who participated weekly in equine-assisted therapy during a school year. The gait of the children was measured twice with the GAITRite® pressure-sensing mat, before and after the therapy period. The participants did ten sections of walking on the pressure-sensing mat. Twenty-one spatial and temporal gait parameters were chosen and evaluated for further statistical analysis. To determine the normal distribution of the parameters, the Lilliefors normality test was carried out. Depending on the result, the paired t test or the Wilcoxon signed-rank test was used to compare the means of the results of the two measurements (p < 0.05). Significant differences were observed for eight out of the twenty-one parameters which investigation provides some promising results regarding the benefits of equine-assisted therapy for children's quality of life.