Psychotherapist offering equine-assisted psychotherapy

Jul 21 2004

Psychotherapists employ a variety of methods to aid in their patients’ recovery, ranging from conversation to medication to hypnosis to horses. Yes - horses!

For the past year, University of Nevada, Reno alumni Megan Keller has been offering equine-assisted psychotherapy. In an interview with the Reno Gazette Journal, Keller described the benefits of the therapy with horses, or Equassist, as she calls it.

Keller said, “I tell my clients if you learn to negotiate with a 1,000-pound animal, you can learn to work with a 200-pound man.”

Keller’s clients interact with the horses in different ways, one client had to give a horse a bath, a mother and daughter were required to coax a horse to step or jump over a bar suspended between two folding chairs. The exercises help to build confidence, encourage trust in relationships, and also can be used to treat a variety of disorders including depression, anxiety, eating disorders and trauma.

Keller can personally vouch for the healing properties of a horse. When her husband Wally Keller died of cancer five years ago, she and her youngest daughter Katie found working with horses helped with their grief.

“It’s just their majesty, their powerful body language, the goodness of their hearts,” she told the RGJ.

In addition t to her personal experience, Keller said that five years of statistics also demonstrate the effectiveness of using horses.

“It reduces the time in therapy almost in half,” she told the RGJ. “It’s just something the horses do.”