Equine-Assisted Therapy May Be Effective for PTSD

Columbia MR researchers Yuval Neria and Prudence Fisher are featured on the website BloodHorse for their work assessing the effectiveness of Equine-Assisted Therapy (EAT) for people with PTSD. Dr. Xi Zhu, assistant professor of clinical neurobiology, and first author on the paper said, "This project provides the first neurobiological evidence of the effectiveness of equine-assisted therapy for treating veterans and civilians who suffer from PTSD."  "The results from this study are very exciting for the hundreds of thousands of Americans who suffer from PTSD," said Fisher, Associate Professor at Columbia Psychiatry, who co-led the study with Neria, Professor at Columbia Psychiatry.  "The results provide the first-of-its-kind proof that equine-assisted treatment may have not only a clinical promise but also brain based changes that may increase a patient's capacity to enjoy life despite facing traumas and war adversities, which make this treatment so unique," said Neria, senior author of this study.