The Efficiency of Animal-Assisted Therapy in Cognitive Behavioral Therapy: Psychotherapeutic Cases

We discuss a rather new approach for the Russian psychotherapeutic practice — animal-assisted therapy. Russian scientific and psychotherapeutic literature lacks scientific studies that comprehensively consider the effectiveness of animal-assisted therapy (both positively and negatively), its use in cognitive behavioral therapy (CBT) and analyze in detail the researchers’ own experience of using animal therapy with a description of specific cases. Hence we discuss the key characteristics of animal-assisted therapy, describe the procedure of registering an animal for participation in therapy, analyze the results of using animal-assisted therapy for various psychotherapeutic and psychocorrectional problems, and substantiate the efficiency of animal-assisted therapy within CBT and its catalytic role in therapeutic processes. We describe the experience of using animal-assisted therapy as part of CBT. Using the example of two thematic cases that illustrate various goals and conditions, the structure and relevance of the inclusion of an animal in CBT depending on the client’s problem are considered, and methods of using an animal relevant to the client’s problem and psychotherapeutic goals are presented.