AAT with Adults

Animals help to alleviate loneliness and anxiety in people. The simple act of petting an animal causes a person's blood pressure to drop. Studies have shown that when you pet a dog, not just your heart rate slows down and blood pressure drops, but so does the animal's. This indicates a true, mutual human-animal bond. Animals provide excellent company for people who are lonely and animals are very good listeners. This makes a person feel loved and wanted which in turn improves their general well being.

Animal-assisted therapy is used to treat adults with psychiatric disorders like Schizophrenia, Bipolar disorders etc. People with mental illnesses tend to have an inward focus. Therapy animals help them refocus themselves on their environment; rather than thinking and talking about themselves and their problems, they watch and talk to and about the animals.

For people with emotional problems, animals help them to reach outside themselves and to put aside fears of an uncertain future. Animals live in the here and now, and interacting with them makes one keenly aware of the present with all its joys and idiosyncrasies.

These animals don't care how a person looks or what they say and this makes the clients feel fully accepted without the fear of rejection.