http://www.care2.com/greenliving/farm-animal-therapy.html
Farm Animal Therapy?
In case you need another good reason to spend time on the farm, the Norwegians have just documented one. Hanging around the homestead, communing with cows, sheep, pigs, and the like, can help people with mental illness cope better with their stress, according to a study out of the Norwegian University of Life Sciences in Aas.
Specifically, the 60-some study patients, who suffered from schizophrenia, anxiety, personality or emotional disorders, significantly improved their self sufficiency after spending three hours twice a week for three months with the animals.
And according to a Reuter’s article, the researchers took measures to ensure the animals were the positive variable: “The study tried to ensure that the patients’ positive responses were not caused by the kindness of a farmer or some other factor unrelated to the animals. During farm visits the patients were not, for instance, given coffee breaks.”
While the benefits of Animal Assisted Therapy has been noted in cat and dog care for some time, this is the first study to chart it in farm animals. This idea of Green Care farming has taken hold in Norway, where it’s now part of a Ministry of Agriculture and Food program.
As experts on the green movement, we’re willing to go out on a limb and extrapolate the results to say they likely apply to all of us. We could all use some more farm time.
Plenty is an environmental media company dedicated to exploring and giving voice to the green revolution that will define the 21st Century. Click here to subscribe to Plenty.
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Ruth--thank you very much for the info on geese (I've had a fear of them since day camp--over 25 years ago--when they'd aggressively honk and flap at me while their herringbone-patterned snake-like tongues were hissing; I've had other menacing interactions with them since and don't really understand why, so I avoid areas with geese at all costs).
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Right on, Jo Jo!
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I'm a psychiatrist. Part of my specialty training was at Creedmoor State Psychiatric Center in Queens Village, New York. There, at one corner of the fenced-in hospital grounds, in the midst of what has become a rather urban area, is a small working farm. I don't know if anyone ever did a formal study, but it seems to me that it has long been appreciated that spending some time on this farm was a healthful intervention for some of our patients. I did not have any direct experience of the farm but there were some very aggressive large grey geese roaming loose on the hospital grounds. They sometimes made my walk to the outpatient clinic difficult or even dangerous. When I tried to protect my legs from their painful nips by using my leather book bag as a shield, the ganders would go for the hand holding the bag. In an amusing turn of events, I learned by observing one patient how to protect myself. He bent forward, his hands stretched out in front of him over his bowed head and upper torso and made an undulating, bobbing, waving motion -- just like an aggressive goose. The gander turned tail and moved away. I had previously worked at the Max Planck Institute for Behavioral Physiology in Seewiesen, Germany, where 1974 Nobel Prize winner Konrad Lorenz did his duck and geese studies. I was familiar with this goose body language, but it took a psychiatric patient to teach me to employ it for self-defense. It worked! I wish I’d had an opportunity to tell the patient
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I have quite a few animals, of different species. I love them all,and they each have made a difference in my being. They are more loving and understanding than any human that I've met.
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Its not really rocket science that our human lives are made fuller when we are around the rest of nature. These non-human animals don't ask to be farmed and killed, apart from the environmental problems of 'farming' non human animals and the destruction of habitat, greenhouses gases, etc. Its time we all made the connection with what you put on your plate and the state of our planet...
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