Equine-assisted youth program: Improving behavior and symptomology in children at risk

We previously published improvement in the children's Global Assessment of Functioning following equine-assisted psychotherapy (EAP) in children with a history of intrafamily violence. The purpose of this study was to describe the effect of EAP on behavior and symptoms in children at risk for mental dysfunction. The Beck Youth Inventory was administered to children referred to a psychotherapist for treatment of various mental health disorders before and after EAP. The Beck Youth Inventory is a 100 item self-report instrument with five subscales, self-concept, anxiety, depression, anger and disruptive behavior. Forty children were entered into the study; 23% scored abnormally high on the anxiety subscale, 18% scored abnormally high on the depression scale, 23% scored abnormally high on the anger subscale, 30% scored abnormally high on the disruptive behavior subscale and 45% scored abnormally low on the self-concept subscale. Those children who had abnormal values pre EAP were found to have improved scores post EAP. The subscales which showed the greatest improvement were anger (p = 0.04) and self-concept (p = 0.007). Further research is needed to explore the mechanism of action of EAP. It is clear it is a useful and culturally appropriate intervention for children.