Equine Assisted Therapy (Horse Therapy)

You may have heard of equine assisted therapy or horse therapy. Counseling and Wellness Center of Pittsburgh has partnered with Instable to offer Equine Therapy. We are thrilled to have this option available to our clients. This can be a stand alone therapy intervention or work in conjunction with your normal therapy appointment. Work with a Horse to health your mental health.

Equine therapy can help a variety of clients, whether you are an adult, a child, a family or a group, horse therapy has so much to offer many therapy clients. We are offering the EGALA model of horse therapy. If you are wondering what is horse assisted or animal therapy, just imagine, getting the benefits of traditional therapy like understanding yourself and the world around you more deeply, a steep rise in social learning and these improvements can even result in a decrease in anxiety, decrease in depression, decrease in stress.
I know it seems a bit hard to understand so lets talk about how it works!

In EGALA therapy, there is an equine therapist and a human therapist together with the client or clients in the horse arena. The horse specialist is there to be sure that the horse is feeling safe and well attended to just as your therapist is there for you. With both specialists working together, you are encouraged to interact with the animal. You can take it slow if you are not familiar with animals. As you interact with the horse, by petting, talking, walking along side your therapist will be nearby taking notes. You will be able to talk with your therapist in following appointments about your experience while interacting with the horse, as a trained counselor, your therapist will help you to understand how some of your mental health symptoms present in relation to the horse therapy session. The sequence of this form of treatment is to do in person or online counseling for several sessions and then one horse therapy appointment and then more traditional therapy appointments before another horse therapy.

The most important part is to talk about what happens in the horse therapy appointment before doing another. Keep in mind, there is no horse riding experience needed because you will be staying on the ground the whole time! Additionally, insurance does cover this form of therapy which is proven to help many clients with a variety of issues but we do have a limited number of therapists who offer this form of therapy. Please reach out to discuss more with our scheduling team.