Animal-assisted therapy

• April 24, 2024

What would you think if your doctor recommended you to have a pet? Pets can provide physical and psychological benefits in the treatment of many diseases. There are many studies that have been conducted on this subject, but it is now that its real application begins to spread.

It was the year 1953 when the psychiatrist Boris M. Levinson rested in his office with his dog Jingles next to him. A patient of the doctor appeared very nervous before the appointment. It was a mother with her child, who showed great withdrawal and that afternoon was very upset. Dr. Levinson's dog approached the boy, named Johnny, and started playing with him. The psychiatrist had the brilliant idea of ​​including Jingles in the treatment to see if this therapy helped Johnny's rehabilitation.

Two different disciplines

What started as a trial result of chance, has ended up constituting two very efficient practices that today are known as Animal Assisted Activity (A.A.A.) and Animal Assisted Therapy (T.A.A.). The first of these programs proposes encounters or visits in which the animal is incorporated and plays a basic role. It is something spontaneous and not regulated, that is to say, that the therapist can be perfectly a non-professional volunteer and, therefore, the advances are not registered and there are no concrete objectives. The environments in which an A.A.A. develops They can be as varied and are not specific.

The T.A.A. it is something much more serious and orderly. A series of objectives and goals are proposed for the recovery of a patient that, as a general rule, has not improved with traditional medicine. Thus the progresses within this therapy are picked up for the study, the establishment of values ​​in the evolution and the diagnosis. These are some features by which both treatments are differentiated and because the person who controls the process is a physiotherapist or a psychologist, that is, someone qualified.

Video Medicine: Animal Assisted Therapy: The power of pets? (April 2024).