The Effects Of Animal Based Therapy Practices On Clients Who Have Nonfluent Aphasia Therapy

Nightingale and Freud’s contributions to psychotherapy methods using animal-assistance did not end where they began. Dr. Boris Levinson made-- what was just a curiosity by some-- a legitimized

Speech and language therapy helps provide children, young people and their families with life changing treatments and support. Speech and language therapy can provide a wide range of help the services are mainly known for helping children and young people with communication problems but they also help children and young people that have problems eating, drinking and swallowing. Using specialist skills, the speech and language therapy work directly with clients and their careers and help develop tailored support that suits their individual needs. These therapists work alongside teachers and other health professionals, such as doctors and nurses the people that benefit from speech and language therapy range from all ages.

Many studies have shown that AAT is able to help a wide variety of people. Many different diseases and disabilities have been proven to benefit from AAT. For example, in Table 1 in the equine-assisted therapy article, the author explains that each type of horse therapy benefits certain people. In dressage, a type of riding where the horse and rider work together to make precision movements, helps people with Polio, Parkinson’s Disease, and traumatic head injury (Ratliffe and Sanekane 35). Yet, AAT is used for many other types of situations as well. AAT is a common treatment used for children with Autism Spectrum Disorder (ASD), medical conditions, compromised medical functions, emotional difficulties, as well as behavioral and physical problems (Nimer and Lundahl 226).

Every single year, millions of children test below state and national education standards. The relationship developed between humans and animals in an educational setting prove to be beneficial in emotional stability and goal-oriented support. The animals provide an environment that is judgement free, as well as, encouraging and supportive. Research has proven that animal assisted therapy, overall, reduces blood pressure, heart rate and reduction of stress-related hormones.2,4 The dogs used in Animal Assisted Therapy are certified through various National Organizations and have a predetermined number of location visits prior to receiving certification. The research that has been conducted shows a significant correlation of elementary students between improved reading letter grade and time spent reading to an animal assisted therapy dog. The purpose of this study is to determine if canine assisted therapy improves elementary scores in all subject matter.

Based on the outcome assessments the speech therapist may find alternatives to increase treatment outcomes.

Animal Assisted Therapy also known as animal-assisted therapy has been formally introduced to the world in the last ten years or so. Although animals have always been a place of comfort for a lot of people, scientists just began to realize the impact animals have on society. The world has begun to experiment with what animals can do to benefit human health. The most common type of animal-assisted therapy is equine-assisted therapy. Equines are horses. Equine-assisted therapy 's impact on minors who have mental health issues have led to a successful new type of therapy that includes multiple benefits. Equine-assisted therapy has worked well in is treating adolescents and children how to communicate and connect with others. Two big issues that animal-assisted therapy has been known to help is Autism and kids with attachment and social problems.

I think that the Goerlich community itself could do more to benefit from cypress and should try to engage him more with a structured program in order to get the most out of him being at the facility. Additional client outcomes you could expect from this program is increased self of independence and self esteem if you are giving the clients a sense of role to play and allow them to feel needed by taking care of the dog. Taking care of the dog could include the simple task of feeding him everyday or even brushing him. Other outcomes could include an increase in sense of companionship and decrease in loneliness and increased social interaction. Based off of this study as well as my own experience of living with a dog my entire life, I believe that AAT intervention is a worthy program for a client to participate in. I believe that this is a worthy program as in short it can show an increase in overall quality of life. Although AAT could be used in other professions for practice with ADL’s outcomes specific to this program outcomes we would see as RT’s could include those in addition to increase in self esteem and the feeling of needing to be

Animal-Assisted Therapy (AAT), which can be provided in a group or individual settings, is designed to promote improvement in a human’s physical, social, emotional, or cognitive function. An article by Chitic,

With limited empirical research supporting the use and effectiveness of animal-assisted therapy, it is reasonable to suggest that the costs of implementing AAT into occupational therapy are not worth the benefits. Occupational therapy modalities are already effective at treating patients with many different disabilities and/or disorders—integrating a new type of therapy into occupational therapy is less convenient and more expensive than leaving an already effective therapy as is.

Autistic children and even autistic adults often have meltdowns, outbursts, stress, and sometimes even as bad of symptoms as depression over the course of their life. Many parents with autistic children have tried multiple types of therapy, and often wonder if animal therapy would be a better path for their family. When trying assisted animal therapy for the first time, parents in every study I read about noticed that their child was calmer, more alert, and had an overall decrease in the amount of outbursts and meltdowns in a day. One family that was spoke about in the book Animal-assisted Interventions for Individuals with Autism, known as the Weiss family, had a very positive experience when they purchased their child a service animal. The

AAT utilizes trained and certified animals to improve an individual’s well-being in all aspects emotional, physical and social (Sellers, 2004). It is relatively a new treatment and was initially implemented by Boris Levinson in his psychotherapy practice (Perkins et al., 2008). AAT, with its tactile comfort and companionship as well as a mode of social interaction, encourages a positive attitude and eases the negative effect of living in a retirement facility (Perkins et al., 2008). Unlike interventions with humans which tends to be judgmental and biased, animals tend to be more friendly and non-judgmental thus, facilitating more sociable behaviors than even more than the well-intentioned staff members (LaFrance et al., 2007).

Various studies regarding LSVT and Dysarthria examined both dysarthria and non-progressive dysarthria as well. The research has indicated that the LSVT program improves elements of voice and motor speech. Although the initial purpose of the program was to improve these elements in individuals with Parkinson’s Disease, research has taken some of the elements that the program provides and apply them to other disorders with voice and motor speech involvement. In addition to the different areas of motor speech and voice, research has been done to evaluate LSVT regarding a variety of diagnoses and areas of motor, sensory, and neurological disorders. The research studies, aside from Parkinson’s Disease, is limited to case studies and single-subject design and findings are limited. (Fox, Morrison, Ramig, & Sapir, 2002). Awareness of sensory processing has increased in research as well as training has been incorporated into the program and the research has discussed that “intensity of treatment (hour-long, high-effort sessions), frequency of clinical contact (four times a week for 1 month), sensory retraining, and simple instructions (“think loud”) are key to the success of the LSVT (Fox et al., 2002). Another strength of the research is that majority of the studies performed a follow up

This section is a little difficult for me because at the moment I do not have the animal that I am going to be doing AAT-C with so I really do not know what I will be able to do in the future as far as techniques and interventions. What you can do with a dog is not what you can necessarily do with a rabbit or a cat. However, at the end of the day human-animal interaction is the main intervention I will be using throughout my sessions. As all the readings mentioned, the animal can touch and offer our clients affection, comfort that we, as humans, must be careful of offering at all. The interventions can be as simple as the animal being next to my client, to them petting them or my client actively grooming my animal. I can also be more directive and build time into our sessions where the client does tricks with the animal, play with them, or we do activities such as going on walks.

We at ABC Therapy have consistently dedicated ourselves to the betterment of patients’ lives. To continue this dedication, I propose that we incorporate the use of animal assistance in our therapy sessions. The connection that men and women share with animals is immeasurable, and brings about a level of engagement that we only wish we could reach as humans. Do our current methods work? Yes, but to separate us from other clinics we need embrace that connection and apply it to our current methods. Animal Assisted Therapy (AAT) used by an occupational therapist (OT), can help make a patient’s goal easier to achieve. The fact that animals don’t speak or judge people seems to speak

In the field of therapy, there are numerous of therapy available out there for different type of individuals and situations as well. There is one type of therapy that usually contains people and animal, it is animal-assisted therapy is a therapeutic approach that brings animals and individuals with physical and/or emotional needs together to perform the therapy. Animal-assisted therapy tend to be focused on individuals either children or elderly for them to be able to connect with the animal thus feeling comfortable talking with the therapist. Pet therapy works for all ages, whether sick or not (Lanchnit, 2011). Although, this paper, most of the focus is on animal-assisted therapy towards children using dogs.