Equine-Assisted Services for Veterans with PTSD: a Meta-Analysis

What is it about?

Equine-assisted services may provide an effective treatment for veterans with PTSD, many of whom are resistant to traditional talk therapies. To explore their effectiveness, the authors identified 2,609 records to select 18 quantitative studies to meta-analyze. These studies presented four lines of evidence, each of which provided support for the effectiveness of equine-assisted interventions for veterans with PTSD. First, veterans with PTSD who received equine-assisted psychotherapy and therapeutic riding showed very large, significant improvements during treatment. Second, they also showed large, significant improvements from before treatment to follow-ups a month or more after treatment. Third, veterans made large, significant improvements during equine-assisted services compared to veterans on a waitlist. Finally, veterans made medium, significant improvements with equine-assisted services when compared to treatment-as-usual. While the evidence is promising, shortcomings in the literature, particularly in the number of controlled studies comparing equine-assisted services to other treatments and the enduring effects suggests a need for more high quality studies.

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