Pet Therapy

Paper Summary:

This paper examines previous research in the concept of pet therapy. It shows that pets are extremely useful in providing a method of contact and support for those in need and looks at the different manners in which pets are utilized. This paper shows that, if correctly planned, targeted, and assessed, pet therapy can play an important, even vital, role in the treatment and comforting of individuals of all ages and backgrounds, at all levels of the health care service.

From the Paper:

"Animal-assisted therapy has a long, but undocumented history, and only within the last half of the twentieth century has research and professional response been conducted on the use of animals in therapy. Although AAT is often perceived as being a modern modality, the first known therapeutic use of animals started in Gheel, Belgium in the ninth century, where learning to care for farm animals has long been an important part of an assisted living program designed for people with disabilities. The earliest uses of animal-assisted healing were for psychiatric patients, most notably at the York Retreat in England, founded in 1792 by the Society of Friends as an alternative to conventional therapy at "lunatic asylums" of the period. Patients were taught self-control as they were charged with the routine care of the animals in the program, and the program became a model for reform of other asylums (Mallon, 1992)."

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