Using Therapeutic Riding as an Intervention for Combat Veterans: An International Classification of Functioning, Disability, and Health (ICF) Approach

A Systematic Review of Equine-Assisted Interventions in Military Veterans Diagnosed with PTSD

“…Of the nine studies, one was a randomized controlled trial (Johnson et al, 2018), one used a two-group, sequentially-assigned design with repeated measures (Burton et al, 2019), three were single group, repeated-measures (Craven, 2013;Malinowski et al, 2018;Wharton et al, 2019), three were single group, repeated-measures with mixed methods (Gómez, 2016;Lanning et al, 2017;Nevins et al, 2013), and authors of one study used a qualitative research approach (LaFleur, 2015). Three of these studies were doctoral dissertations (Craven, 2013;Gómez, 2016;LaFleur, 2015).…”

“…Different EAI approaches were used in the studies. Two authors used EAP (Burton et al, 2019;Craven, 2013), three used THR (Johnson et al, 2018;LaFleur, 2015;Lanning et al, 2017), one used equine-assisted therapy (EAT; Gómez, 2016), one used equine-assisted activities therapy (EAAT; Malinowski et al, 2018), one used equine-facilitated cognitive processing therapy (EF-CPT; Wharton et al, 2019), and one used both EAT and natural horsemanship (Nevins et al, 2013).…”

“…A common purpose in the quantitative and mixed methods designs was to examine or explore the efficacy/impact of EAI on PTSD symptoms and/or associated psychosocial/biological variables in military veterans (Burton et al, 2019;Craven, 2013;Gómez, 2016;Johnson et al, 2018;Lanning et al, 2017;Malinowski et al, 2018;Nevins et al, 2013;Wharton et al, 2019). In the qualitative study, authors sought to describe the experience of using THR as part of the PTSD treatment in veterans (LaFleur, 2015).…”

“…Sample sizes ranged from one participant (Nevins et al, 2013) to 51 participants (Lanning et al, 2017), with all participants identified as American military veterans diagnosed with PTSD. Specific military branch was only identified in three studies (Craven 2013;Johnson et al, 2018;Nevins, et al, 2013).…”

“…Specific military branch was only identified in three studies (Craven 2013;Johnson et al, 2018;Nevins, et al, 2013). The majority of settings varied and included training arenas/centers for horses (Burton et al, 2019;Gómez, 2016;Johnson et al, 2018;LaFleur, 2015;Lanning et al, 2017;Malinowski et al, 2018;Nevins et al, 2013), a farm (Wharton et al, 2019), and a ranch (Craven, 2013).…”