Can Animals Help Humans Heal? Animal-Assisted Interventions in Adolescent Mental Health
Sunday, March 28th, 2004
"Conducting and AAT program for children and adolescents in special education in public schools: Reality and Expectancy" Aaron H. Katcher, M.D. & Susan P. Teumer, M.A.
Abstract:
Evaluations of a skill-card based small- and farm-animal program for residential and public school children and adolescents have demonstrated significant improvement as measured by highly standardized clinical indices (Achenbach and B.A.S.C.). The improvement in comportment is relatively rapid within the environment of the program but requires six months or more to generalize to the children's classrooms. There are major problems, however, in interpretation of those conventional measures of progress:
The differences in learning styles within experiential programs such
as AAT and conventional expectations of student behavior within regular
classrooms.
Two biasing factors which come into play when the child's teachers
are used as evaluators: 1) the negative expectations generated by the
child's behavior in his regular classroom, and 2) the positive bias
created by the increase in social attractiveness of people associated
with animals.
The failure to define specific effects of human-animal interaction
which can be observed independently of global outcomes.
The positive bias of some teachers toward working with the animal
and at the farm in comparison to their regular classrooms
These potential sources of errors in evaluation (such as the positive halo created by the animal and farm environment of the program) may be a valuable part of the therapeutic effect of the program. However, if AAT is to be related to the significant research in evolutionary psychology, very specific measures of attention, and studies of how animals affect the "theory of mind" must be deployed.
Bio:
Aaron H. Katcher graduated from Williams College and the University of Pennsylvania. He took his psychiatric residency at the Hospital of the University of Pennsylvania. He joined the faculty and taught at the Medical, Dental, and Veterinary Schools. Over the past 26 years he has done some work examining human-animal relationships and its interactive physiology. He has also studied the clinical or treatment effects of animal contact. At present he is a consultant to the Our Farm Project of the Animal Therapy Association and for his many sins is condemned to live in Texas.
Bio:
Susan P. Teumer holds a Master's degree in special education from the University of Northern Colorado, and has more than 20 years experience teaching children with special needs. She has been involved in animal-assisted therapy programs for 13 years, and has served on national committees and boards for the Delta Society, Human-Animal Bond in Colorado, and Larimer Animal-People Partnership. Additionally, she has helped to develop and teach graduate level coursework in the field. After establishing a small farm program in Colorado dedicated to animal-assisted therapy and experiential learning, Sue moved to Taylor, Texas, where she now serves as Lead Teacher for Animal Therapy Association's project at Our Farm. This project has been in existence for three years, and has provided services to more than 200 students.
