For as long as the diagnosis of ADHD has been recognized, there have been experiential methods to treat it. From wilderness excursions to ropes courses, therapists have looked for ways to help those children burdened with high anxiety, short attention span, inability to focus and complete tasks, and heightened excitability, learn to understand and manage their condition. However, one of the difficulties that has been encountered repeatedly in working with ADHD children is a way to teach them the necessary social skills to develop effective relationships. As often those around ADSHD children will complain about their apparent lack of interest, difficulty in carrying on a meaningful conversation, and maintaining accountability, relationships are often strained. And while they may be able to learn to use goal and completion charts to organize and complete their own tasks, children with ADHD may continue to struggle with face to face interactions. While verbal reminders have fallen short, therapists have turned to non-verbal methods to help these children identify how they present and the impact that it has on those around them. This is where equine therapy has, of recent, been utilized quite intently.
So how is it that being around a horse can effectively help a child who has trouble focusing in the first place? To answer this question, we must first understand that ADHD is expressed as a hypervigilance to the environment. While the attention of those not affected by ADHD can be held quite sufficiently by one component of their environment, ADHD children are constantly switching their focus from one thing to another, and digesting little feedback from the world around them in the process. This hypervigilance is very similar to the physiology of a nervous horse. However, the difference is that for a horse experiencing this kind of heightened arousal, the pertinent response would be to run. After all, fear initiates flight. And in fleeing, the physiological components of arousal would be actualized and the system reset — essentially, the horse would calm back down.
Continue reading Equine Therapy and ADHD: How It Works, by Claire Dorotik MA
