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The Wonders of Equine Assisted Psychotherapy

wendy — Wed, 07 Jul 2010 14:36:55 +0000

Working with horses and professional therapists, people discover new ways of dealing with addiction problems. Many times patients receive an invaluable insight into their own behaviours through interacting with these magnificent creatures.

A relationship developed with a horse can offer challenges to help overcome fears, build up trust, respect, compassion, develop communication skills, problem solving and coping techniques as well as self confidence and self esteem. These skills are transferable to many other areas of ordinary day to day life.

People learn about themselves and others by participating in activities with the horses. Horses are very intelligent animals and they are deeply perceptive to human behaviour which makes them a great companion in therapy. They are extremely open to building trustful relationships if the trust is mutual. They can sense any kind of stress that we may be experiencing and react according to the signals they receive from us. What’s most fascinating about them is that they can neither lie nor judge but they can surely help us discover new things about ourselves and open doors to a new found confidence, joy of life, understanding, free us from our resentments and provide us with a wider perspectives of ourselves.

Once you get to form a bond with your horse, you will realise how the subtle changes in the way you feel further impact your relationship with your horse and consequently with your family members and your social circle. Moreover, they can also assist you in building natural leadership skills or they can help you tone down those compulsive behaviours that end up restricting your life.

Recent applications of EAP transcend beyond the treatment of addiction and mood disorders as it is now widely recognised to be a very powerful tool in treating trauma and other mental illnesses. In fact, so powerful that we have seen the EAP turn many skeptics into firm believers just after a couple of sessions!

Horse riding at PROMIS

wendy — Fri, 18 Jun 2010 14:27:46 +0000

What better way to take in the beautiful Kent countryside than on horseback!

Horse riding offers a great workout for both the mind and body, physically boosting the cardiovascular system and mentally easing stresses on the mind.

Horse riding is recognised as having excellent therapeutic qualities. The psychological benefits can be of equal importance to riders as the physical benefits.

Simply being outdoors and enjoying the countryside will boost your general well-being and act as a great stress buster. There is a real sense of exhalation and freedom when you ride, a feeling that is second to none.

Furthermore, developing a relationship and sense of trust between yourself and your horse is highly rewarding. Learning to control and care for an animal much larger than yourself can have a profound affect on your confidence and is a great feeling.

One of our patients, who went horse riding yesterday exclaimed that he felt ¨at peace riding through the beautiful countryside¨.

All PROMIS patients can book horse riding treks through their focal counsellor as well as taking it a step forward with EAP (Equine Assisted Psychotherapy).

Relax in the PROMIS Tipi

wendy — Thu, 17 Jun 2010 10:36:02 +0000

The word ‘tipi’ comes from the Lakota language and is made up of two elements: thi, which means ‘to dwell in’ and pi, which means ‘they dwell’.

No temporary structure is more beautiful, more comfortable, more robust or more practical. The tipi is strong enough to withstand fierce storms and is capable of being a comfortable home all year round and we will definitely be making it a permanent spring/summer structure, so that our patients can truly enjoy the beauty of our surroundings.

We have our very own tipi here at PROMIS Hay Farm, situated next to our camp fire; patients can relax by the evening fire and take shelter in the relaxing tipi complete with comfy cushions.

Patients will also be enjoying the tipi for relaxing sessions of acupuncture, shiatsu massage and hot stones, making the whole experience completely tranquil.

World Cup with PROMIS

wendy — Mon, 14 Jun 2010 13:30:34 +0000

Brits set to consume 774 billion calories in snacks, 95 billion calories in drinks and almost 3 billion units of alcohol during the World Cup 2010.

A research by AXA PPP health-care has revealed that millions of football supporters in the UK could be putting their health at risk, with alcohol and calorie consumption and time spent on the sofa set to soar for the duration of the World Cup.

Health threats to overindulgent World Cup TV viewers´include hangovers and consequent liver damage in addition to the increased risk of developing diabetes and heart disease as a result of the increased calorie intake. Moreover, for fans with underlying coronary heart disease, there is an elevated risk of heart attacks, especially during the stressful crunch matches.

Whilst we won’t be drinking, here at PROMIS, we will still have all the fun the World Cup has to offer watching it from the comfort of our patient lounge on our 40 inch plasma TV, accompanied by a variety of healthy snacks!

Rehab Diary in the Sun Newspaper

robin — Fri, 30 Apr 2010 09:27:14 +0000

Catheryn Kemp describes her brave battle to come of pain killers in an article she has written for the Sun newspaper.

Read this fascinating account here:

http://www.thesun.co.uk/sol/homepage/woman/health/health/2953600/Rehab-diary-of-a-painkiller-addict.html

Mephedrone

robin — Mon, 29 Mar 2010 11:40:35 +0000

There are calls again this morning for the urgent reclassification of mephedrone.

This is a very interesting problem because it sits right on the fault line of a crucial addiction debate.

On the one hand you have people who think that if drugs are illegal it will send a clear message to young people that they will then head and avoid the risks of taking dangerous drugs. This is partly true. Availability and cost do seem to effect consumption. Alcohol pricing seems to correlate to consumption and so cheaper and more available alcohol is argued to cause more problems. In the same way, if we make a drug like mephedrone harder to get hold of and more expensive then we will reduce the overall consumption. However this approach won’t stop people experimenting and it won’t stop addiction problems. In some ways these sorts of measures also have the effect of simply moving the target. For example, I wonder if it is only a coincidence that cannabis has recently been reclassified back up the scale of illegality and here we see the rise in the use of other “legal” highs?

On the other hand if they do successfully make mephedrone “illegal”, won’t people looking to escape reality just simply move to the next “legal” high? And won’t the group of people habituated to mephedrone now be criminalised if they continue with it? This is the other side of the fault line. We need to ask why do we have so many people trying to escape reality? Is it the culmination of years of a lack of treatment strategy that has led to this explosion of people finding so many ways to change their moods? In the recent NTA analysis of cocaine users it was found that the number of 18-25 year olds who have tried cocaine has risen from 9% in 2005 to 18% in 2010. Cocaine is a class A drug and yet we are now finding that in this younger group nearly 1/5 has already tried it? So much for criminalisation being the solution. I doubt it is a coincidence that PROMIS had to close 18 specialised treatment beds for young people and the only other significant provider, Middle Gate Lodge, also closed all of it’s beds for young people this month. There are now no significant specialist providers of treatment for young people after years of neglect of residential services.

The government has been right that legislation alone can’t hold back the tide of addiction problems, but if there is so little being done to help people recover from these problems, then it is no wonder we have an epidemic on our hands.

There are no easy answers to these problems but is seems to me we really have a tidal wave of a problem coming up from the youngsters in society and we have no services left to help them and in incoherent and inconsistent strategy from the DOH.

Robin Lefever

Will Self

robin — Wed, 17 Mar 2010 19:45:52 +0000

I listened to a very interesting talk last night by the author Will Self. He has discussed his recovery from addiction in many interviews but last night he gave an excellent talk to Doctors and Psychiatrists to try and help them understand how they can help others with this problem. He made the very good point that when addicts are presenting in front of doctors and psychiatrsist they are often in denial of their own addictions and, even if not, will tend to keep them a secret because to admit them would mean accepting the need to stop. He pointed out that without this crucial piece of information Doctors and Psychiatrists will often make plenty of other diagnosis and, more worrying, prescribe plenty of psychiatric medication.

Of course Will Self accepted that mental illnesses can exist as well as addiction but not nearly as often as people imagine. In our own research we have found that nearly all people with addiction problems will display extreme psychiatric symptomatology on admission to our clinic. We studied this effect and retested our patients using psychiatric diagnostic questionnaires and found that nearly all these symptoms were reduced by half by simply removing the addictive process. In other words we should wait until the addictive processes have been dealt with before making other psychiatric diagnosis like depression or bi polar disorder. This may seem like common sense and indeed it is the standard diagnostic procedure in both the American and European diagnostic manuals and yet I think you would be horrified to discover how often people with addiciton issues are admitted to clinics and immediately given other psychiatric labels and, more concerning, put onto psychiatric medications without waiting to see what is really going on. There really should be more care about this.

Robin Lefever

Self Harm

robin — Mon, 15 Mar 2010 18:42:38 +0000

There is a report today saying that there is an alarming rise in the number of people self harming.

PROMIS has always treated self harm as part of the spectrum of compulsive disorders. We see the process of excitement and anticipation of harming, the release of tension and feeling of euphoria and then the subsequent crash and depression that follow as being so similar to the addictive compulsive cycle for other behaviors like bulimia or illegal drug use that even if it were a different process, the treatment method should be the same. For example, look at the way that drug addicts often become obsessed with the paraphernalia of using, self harmers can have the same relationship with their paraphernalia. Have a look at the way that bulimics have a strong sense of anticipation leading up to a binge purge process, followed by a terrible crash and depression. I think it is easy to see the parallels.

In terms of recovery, our approach for all addictive processes is to stop the behavior and to find other ways of expressing and managing feelings. Another corner stone of our treatment is to help people rebuild their self worth and value themselves again. Without this extensive rebuilding of the individual there is little hope of recovery.

My biggest concern for the treatment of self harmers in this country, is the same concern I have for addicts. The services on offer have something to say about the physical process but little to offer in the most crucial part of treatment, the gentle rebuilding of the individuals. There are wonderful medications to help people withdraw from drugs and there are clever distraction techniques taught to self harmers to divert them away from the most extreme risks of their behavior but there seems also to be a chronic lack of care and support beyond that.

I realise there is a funding dilemma and so the focus of funding is on reducing the most life threatening aspects of all of these behaviors and I applaud the good work that is being done to this effect. However I remain extremely concerned that without managing more of the underlying issues that these people are presenting with then we are simply building up a growing body of individuals who will be revolving door patients in the future passing from department to department.

We want to offer an alternative. Treat the whole individual. Of course this is a lot more expensive in the short term, but the longer term gain is that we can hope to get people out of the system and back into happy and fulfilling lives. I am sure this benefits society more than enough to warrant the extra expense in the short term.

Robin Lefever

SMART Recovery

robin — Thu, 11 Mar 2010 09:05:29 +0000

The Department of Health is investing £100,000 in a two year trial of SMART Recovery, a secular support group similar to AA, according to the Guardian yesterday.

SMART Recovery was created by professor Joe Gerstein as an alternative to AA and taking it’s principles from Albert Ellis’s Rational Emotive Behaviour Therapy programme which itself was a founding cornerstone of Cognitive Behavioural Therapy, much loved by the Department of Health. The programme is thought of as an alternative to AA which considers Alcoholism, an illness, has a spiritual dimension and considers lifelong abstinance essential. SMART Recovery are clear in offering their meetings can also be used as an adjunct to 12 Step ones. In contrast to AA, SMART Recovery has no spiritual dimension, considers it possible to recovery entirely from problems with alcohol and uses only scientifically tested therapy tools which can evolve as new findings are made.

SMART Recovery has a 4 point programme:

Enhancing and Maintaining Motivation
Coping with Urges
Problem Solving
Lifestyle Balance

All very useful tools for alcoholics.

It’s fantastic that there is an alternative for those who find the religious foundations of 12 Step groups difficult and I really hope this group finds a strong hold in the UK.

In AA there is a saying that all you need to set up a new meeting is a coffee pot and a resentment against another meeting! I can see how this can also apply to entire fellowship approaches so I hope SMART evolves on it’s own merits and doesn’t get drawn into too many comparisons against AA. It should instead evolves as another much needed support tool for alcoholics.

Robin Lefever

Making people feel guilty encourages more excessive drinking

robin — Sun, 07 Mar 2010 21:25:22 +0000

In an interesting study at Northwestern’s Kellogg School of Management, researchers have found that making people feel guilty about their drinking is likely to make them drink even more rather than less. The effect is even greater in those who are already feeling guilty.

So many efforts to get people to get help, whether in the family or through government sponsored adverts, try and use guilt as a motivator. This study indicates this is not the best way.

Another interesting finding was that most of the subjects considered that they were safe from the risks of binge drinking themselves but considered their friends to be at risk.

Robin

Reported here: The Media Guru