Horses helping treat PTSD in veterans and first responders - Action News
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Horses helping treat PTSD in veterans and first responders

A ranch 30 minutes out of Medicine Hat, Alta., plays host to a social worker for former members of the Canadian military suffering from post-traumatic stress disorder.

Known as equine facilitated therapy, recipient says the treatment helps him live in the moment

Veterans discover the healing power of horses

3 years ago
Duration 2:24
An Alberta ranch is offering horse-assisted therapy for veterans with PTSD.

A blustering wind blows across the prairie into Martin Gendron's stable as he conducts a riding session with his clientJason MacEachern.

The ranch, seemingly in the middle of nowhere, but actually 30 minutes out of Medicine Hat, Alta., plays host to Gendron's work as a social worker for former members of the Canadian military suffering from post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD).

In a 90 minute session, the former soldierMacEachern works with Blossom a 9 year-old quarter horse through a series of breathing exercises and therapeutic riding sessions.

Gendron's work is part of a new form of therapy using some of Alberta's greatest resources, ample amounts of land, horses and Canada's largest military training centre located in Medicine Hat. Retired military members in the region can take advantage of these resources to address the ghosts of their past.

Martin Gendron facilitates the therapy and is also a research associate at the University of Alberta. (Axel Tardieu/Radio-Canada)

MacEachern, who has suffered from PTSD for 30 years from difficult missions in Cambodia and Bosnia, finds the horses grounding.

"It's living in the now. The horses live in the now," he says. "And so for me to be living in the now is what I need to be doing, not the past. With PTSD, it brings you back a lot. So it's it's hard."

After years of being untreated, he started with a psychologist before discovering horse-assisted therapy for veterans with PTSD.

"Going to see a psychologist or social workers, that works great sitting in the office, but I found this this stuff kind of helps me a little bit better," he says.

PTSD survivors, he explains, are always in a fight or flight mode but with horses, he's able to switch the parasympathetic nervous system into a state of relaxation.

Animals that soothe

More prey than predators, horses are evolutionarilygood companionsfor exercises with a psychologist, Gendron says, because they can naturally can move on from stressful moments where they may have been prey.

"They release the bad energy they can keep going with just grazing and live their life," he says.

"[The animals are] so big andwe have to collaborate with them, it is something that we can connect with as a first responder and military veterans."

Despite promising results, the social worker says science on the effectiveness of equines in treating PTSD remains thin with not enough research being done.

However, there have been some recent "optimistic" studies from a team of researchers from Boston College and the University of Suffolk, according to Gendron.

Jason MacEachern's mental health deteriorated after his second mission in Bosnia-Herzegovina in the 1990s. (Axel Tardieu/Radio-Canada)

In a 2017 study that observed three children aged 10 to 12 years old carrying complex traumas, the authors concluded equine facilitated therapy benefited the mental health of the children involved. Among other things, they noted a lowered level of anxiety, complaints, and behavioural deregulation.

A research assistant at the University of Calgary, Gendron hopes to advance the science in the field with more study that will be released publicly in the future.

Corrections

  • A previous version of this story said Martin Gendron is a research assistant at the University of Alberta. It has been corrected to say that he is a research assistant at the University of Calgary.
    Mar 28, 2022 6:05 PM MT

With files from Axel Tardieu