Hippotherapy

Question

Answer

The American Physical Therapy Association has recognized hippotherapy as a scope of practice as a tool/strategy/approach that can be utilized in treatment since the 1980s. This is a link that you can go to on the American Hippotherapy website to see the letter of endorsement. And just for clarity of conversation, I think it's really important, terminology being what it is that hippotherapy is not a profession. It's not a separate service. You're not a hippotherapist and you don't have a hippotherapy program. If you're practicing hippotherapy it may be in a private practice or it may be through a hospital system. However, it's just part of the plan of care and one of the tools. Also, many times people refer to it as equine therapy or equine assisted therapy and that terminology is old terminology, we don't use that anymore. As the horse is really not assisting the therapy because the clinical decision is made by the therapist. So the horse is our tool, just like we would use any other tool. Thus there is no time when the therapist stops doing their standard practice and starts doing hippotherapy or equine therapy. Basically just as you would incorporate any other tool into your practice to address the activity restrictions or participation limitations, that's how you would apply hippotherapy. So this is the actual description. We don't have a definition of what hippotherapy is because it's hard to define. 

The word "hippo" came from the Greek because they used the word hippo for horse in Greece. In the United States, our language base is Latin so we usually see equine or equestrian when it refers to a horse. This came from Germany originally and the word hippotherapy refers to how therapy professionals, PT, OT, and speech-language pathology professionals use evidence-based practice and clinical reasoning in the purposeful manipulation of the equine movement as a therapy tool meant to engage all the systems in the sensory, neuromotor and cognitive system to promote functional outcome.

Some common diagnosis that benefit include: 

•  ADD/ADHD
• Apraxia
• Autism Spectrum Disorders or Pervasive, Developmental Delay
• Cerebral Palsy
• Cerebral Vascular Accident (stroke)
• Cerebellar Ataxia
• Cognitive Disorders
• Developmental Delay
• Downs Syndrome
• Dysphasia
• Dyspraxia
• Genetic disorders
• Muscular Dystrophies
• Multiple Sclerosis
• Parkinson Disease
• Sensory Processing Disorders
• Speech Delay
• Spina Bifida
• Traumatic Brain Injury (TBI)

Some of the changes that can be seen occur in the following:  

• Postural Control and alignment
• •Balance
• •Coordination & Timing
• •Acquisition of developing skills
• •Gait
• •Pelvic movement
• •Body awareness
• •Multi-sensory processing
• •Righting reactions
• •Motor planning
• Mobility

For more information on Hippotherapy for Physical Therapy Professionals, please see our Overview of Hippotherapy for Physical Therapy Professionals course