Building Internal Resilience Through Horses: A Trauma-Informed Equine-Assisted Learning Program

Описание: This Research Briefing was presented and recorded on August 12, 2021

Presenters: Jennifer Garland, Owner/Program Director, The Mane Intent Inc.; and Dr. Kateryna Keefer, Assistant Professor, Department of Psychology, Trent University.

Building Internal Resilience Through Horses is an innovative trauma-informed community-based program, offered to young women (aged 13-18 years) from Peterborough, ON and surrounding areas who have experienced violence in their home or in dating relationships. The program includes 8 weeks of experiential equine-assisted learning, supplemented with 4 weeks of expressive arts and psychoeducation workshops, designed to enhance coping skills and resilience capacities that would help reduce risk of harm in the future. Program evaluation results support the program’s feasibility and promising outcomes for improving resiliency-related skills in young women who are survivors of interpersonal trauma.

Participants learned about:

The trauma-informed and resilience-focused approach used in the Building Internal Resilience Through Horses program.
The findings of the mixed-methods intervention research, highlighting the feasibility of the program and changes in resiliency outcomes.