We’re going to play a little participation game in our minds.
Raise your hand if you or someone you know has ever lost someone in their immediate or extended family.
Raise your hand if you or someone you know has ever experienced the struggles of an eating disorder.
Raise your hand if you or someone you know, to your knowledge, has ever been treated or medicated for anxiety.
Raise your hand if you or someone you know has ever suffered from depression.
Raise your hand if you or someone you know, to your knowledge, has ever contemplated or attempted suicide.
I presented you with 5 statements. How many applied to you?
Statistics assume that you likely scored 3 out of 5 (60%) or higher. Are they right? I'm going to give you some numbers now. These statistics might shock you, they might apply to you, but if you score higher than 60%, they will matter to you.
- 1 in 10 children show signs of developing mental or emotional disorders
- 1 in 4 adults (18+) suffer from an emotional or mental disorder
- Three-quarters of all emotional and mental disorders begin surfacing and disrupting everyday life for an individual before the age of 24
- 1 in 4 college students have a diagnosable mental or emotional illness
Counseling,
of course, is offered at universities and is typically free-of-charge. While
this is wonderful, it doesn’t get the job done because, still, of those who suffer from an emotional or mental illness, “40%
do not seek help” (Top Mental Health
Challenges, 2016). So, what can be done?
Imagine
a way to provide help, offer an escape, and maybe give a leg up to those who seem to
refuse anything medical. Imagine being the first among any university to offer
a unique opportunity to each and every 1 in 4 of their students who suffer
within themselves against something they can’t quite explain. And imagine this
solution all starts with horses.
A Leg Up
Horses,
if you haven’t yet noticed, are beautifully strong creatures. An average adult
horse weighs anywhere between 900 and 2,000 pounds (Bongianni, 1987). The
fastest (recorded) horse to race was Secretariat, clocking in at a staggering
49mph, achieved during his famous Belmont Stakes win by 31 lengths that left
the world second-guessing the real possibilities of this fascinating creature
(Flatter, 2009). The now mechanical term ‘horsepower’ truly began to be understood and respected.
Like humans, however, these animals crave connection and are good at establishing it (Sussex Research, 2016). When you are stressed, a horse feels it, mirrors that
stress, and calms down with you.
This, among many other reasons, is why Equine Assisted Therapy (EAT) has proved
to foster such impressive results among those with mental, physical, and emotional
disorders or disabilities (Wilkie, Germain, & Theule, 2016).
What is EAT? It is a form of therapy that consists of a client learning to work with a horse in what is known as ‘groundwork.’
At this point, the client is not actually riding the horse, merely working with
the horse while he or she remains on the ground. This develops a trust
connection between the horse and the client (History of Equine). During such exercises, a trained equestrian
therapist can observe the client’s behaviors and measure how he or she is doing
emotionally. The therapist might even simply observe the horse because the
horse will mirror the feelings and emotions of its client (Horses Can Read Human Emotions, 2016).
Some
might think that a massive animal mirroring the anxiety of a client might be
dangerous, but it actually is key to the success of it all. It is called
‘cognitive therapy’ and it goes a little something like this: Individuals who
suffer from disorders involving anxiety are able to notice when a horse sense
danger in their surroundings and wants to flee. The therapist is then able to
talk through what the client is witnessing in the horse, discussing anxious
behaviors and maybe what the horse can do to calm itself. This shift of focus
from the individual’s own anxiety onto the horse’s fear allows the client to
practice choosing to remain calm and work through the situation with the horse
(History of Equine). This is one
example of the many ways horses can emotionally assist those who cannot assist
themselves.
Is This Even Plausible?
As
esteemed universities that offer a range of once-in-a-lifetime courses ranging
from Intro to Scuba Diving to Study of Dinosaurs, you seek to edify your
students’ college experience by offering them courses that will
accompany and enhance their overall study. I propose that an equestrian course
be added to this list. Sundance Resort, located just up Provo Canyon, has a
stable where well-trained and tempered trail horses are used for recreational
riding. For this given cause, it is proposed that an agreement of use be
reached between Sundance, UVU, and BYU for hired equestrian therapists to come
in and offer a course of groundwork, general grooming, horse anatomy and
behavior, and even riding.
Benefits
Here
is a glance at how offering this course would substantially benefit Sundance
Stables, UVU, BYU, and, of course, the students:
Sundance
Stables
Not
many people are actually aware of the stables at Sundance. Between the slopes
and the haunted ski lift, the horses sometimes get overlooked. This course
would offer excellent exposure to the stables, resulting in an increase of
business, general profit, and needed PR.
BYU
and UVU
You
would be the first. You would be the pioneers of a potentially ground-breaking opportunity
for college students. Local news journalists eat these types of stories for
breakfast and would make sure positive exposure was awarded.
More
important than the exposure, this course could actually improve your overall academic performance as universities. Think
about it: 30% of students report feeling depressed to a point that it decreases
their ability to function, another 30% reported that anxiety greatly affected a
recent grade on a test or a project, (Brown, 2016) and "64 percent of young adults who are no longer in college are not attending because of a mental health related reason" (College Student, 2013). There are a lot of students to be helped. With those mental and emotional
improvements, a natural ability to cope with college life and succeed in the
classroom is sure to follow. If students have an outlet, if they are
offered a course that can actually help them manage and endure, the university
then becomes a haven, a counselor, and a life-changing opportunity rather than
viewed as a reason for the anxiety and a trigger for the depression. As we
know, these performance improvements result directly in funding increases.
The Students
The
best way to explain how this proposal benefits the students is to actually
focus on the horses. Listed below are three key elements of working with horses
that would be unmeasurably beneficial to any and all who are offered this
amazing experience.
1. Horses are non-judgmental and unbiased:
These animals only care about someone’s behavior and their emotions. They are
not capable of reacting to someone’s physical appearance or even their mistakes
and weaknesses as a human. “Patients describe this as being crucial to the
therapy and aids in increase of self-esteem and confidence” (History of Equine).
2. Real Life Metaphors: The therapist will often use the animals as a metaphor for
other issues in life. Consider the following example: “One patient was having a
great difficulty discussing how they were feeling about an upcoming move to
another state. She was, however, able to offer many suggestions for how the
help a horse that was being sold feel more comfortable in his new environment.”
Discussing the horse’s situation
allowed the client to better understand her own situation and assisted her in
learning how to self-cope.
This
proposal is more than an additional class; this proposal is for emotional and
mental change. It is for those who can’t explain what they are feeling and
definitely don’t know what to do about it - for those who maybe just need a leg up. This class would provide an
explanation, provide a solution, and provide an escape.
