Effectiveness of animal assisted therapy on children and adolescents with Autism

Autism, a pervasive developmental disorder encompasses a wide range of social, communication, sensory and cognitive deficits that are challenging to treat. Due to the lack of established standardized forms of treatment, adjunct forms of therapy are the primary methods of management. One such therapeutic processes is Animal Assisted Therapy, which has recently witnessed the growing interest and accumulation of studies to assessit sefficiency. The current study focuses on ‘The effectiveness of Animal Assisted Therapy on Children and Adolescents with Autism’. As an intervention technique, a qualitative approach was applied to establish the subjective experiences and changes gained by six participants in the study. A triangulation method was employed to collect data from the primary caregiver, animal assisted therapist and the school special educator, through a semi-structured interview and review of medical reports. The matican alysis was applied to analyze the data. The results indicate an improvement in the area of social and communication skills, amongs tall the children and adolescents. Other benefits such as being calmand relaxed was observed during the therapy sessions. Hence, it can be suggested that future studies focus on individual skill enhancement and flexibility in the number of sessions conducted.