SINGAPORE: Nineteen-year-old Kwok Wei Hao suffers from Angelman syndrome, a rare genetic disorder which affects his movement and speech.<\/p>\n
While he struggles to interact with people, he feels most at ease around horses. To him, they are not only companions, but also gentle healers.<\/p>\n
As he rides, the movement of his body on the saddle helps to improve his motor skills and balance.\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n
It is part of a fast-growing type of therapy known as animal-assisted intervention, where dogs and horses are trained to help people manage stress, trauma and anxiety.<\/p>\n
Healing Horses Singapore,\u00a0which for the past 11 years\u00a0has provided therapeutic horse riding services for youths and others like Wei Hao, has seen demand soar by about 70 per cent over the past two years, largely due to increased mental health awareness.\u00a0<\/p>\n
“It’s not like a regular therapy in an indoor setting. We are always outdoors interacting with animals,\u201d the organisation\u2019s director Chithra Rogers, told CNA.\u00a0<\/p>\n
\u201cKids, even with the most aggressive behaviour \u2026 are very calm when they are mingling with the horses,\u201d she added.\u00a0<\/p>\n
This is because the animals are taught to adapt to sudden movements or outbursts. Each horse also gets at least an hour of rest between sessions to safeguard its welfare, Ms Rogers said.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Some parents still worry about safety, especially if their children are hard to handle, she added. To address these concerns, each therapy session has a team of three to four trained staff overseeing it.\u00a0<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"SINGAPORE: Nineteen-year-old Kwok Wei Hao suffers from Angelman syndrome, a rare genetic disorder which affects his movement and…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":231784,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[35],"tags":[110095,49,48,84,393,394,19970],"class_list":{"0":"post-231783","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-mental-health","8":"tag-animal-assisted","9":"tag-ca","10":"tag-canada","11":"tag-health","12":"tag-mental-health","13":"tag-mentalhealth","14":"tag-therapy"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/231783","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=231783"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/231783\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/231784"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=231783"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=231783"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=231783"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}