Dolphin therapy: what it is, how it works, benefits and limitations

There are various modalities framed within animal-assisted therapy, among which is the dolphin therapy, which are often used to encourage motivation and involvement in therapy of those people who goes to; being used with children and adolescents also to encourage the increase of their levels of stimulation.

Dolphin therapy is one of the therapeutic modalities that has been frequently used with people who present some difficulties in the social, cognitive, emotional and/or psychomotor, implying that during the therapy they swim and interact with the dolphins, this therapy being normally accompanied by a psychological treatment and/or doctor.

Next we will see what dolphin therapy consists of and who would be the people who could benefit from this modality of assisted therapy as animals, as well as we will talk about its effectiveness, being a therapy that has generated enough controversy.

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What is dolphin therapy?

Animal-assisted therapy is a type of therapy that has been used in various modalities using different animals such as dogs, horses or dolphins as support (dolphin therapy)

in order to promote multisensory stimulation in some people who could benefit, as well as to increase their motivation and involvement in therapy, having different ways of using this therapy with different duration and places to carry it out.

Dolphin therapy or dolphin therapy is a modality framed within animal therapies that recommended by some doctors or psychologists to treat various difficulties or conditions at different levels, in which sessions lPeople must swim and interact with the dolphins so that it serves as a resource to stimulate different skills in which certain difficulties have been detected.

This type of animal-assisted therapy is commonly used in addition to psychological therapy and/or treatment doctor, so that patients benefit from better results and that these can be maintained for a period of time higher. However, it is worth mentioning that dolphin therapy, as well as other animal-assisted therapies, have generated considerable controversy due to For a variety of reasons, some activists and therapists have discouraged its use, so we'll talk about it in more detail later. ahead.

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What is this animal-assisted therapy used for?

Dolphin therapy is usually used to work on and improve certain difficulties that some people have on a social, cognitive, emotional and/or psychomotor level, among others. It has been used in a usual way with children with some difficulties at the psychomotor level with an autism spectrum disorder, although this type of therapy has also been used with people suffering from post traumatic stress disorder, some depressive symptoms and there are even programs that have been applied with children with Down syndrome and ADHD, with positive results having been obtained.

It should be noted that dolphin therapy It is usually carried out in designated areas of some water parks or also in centers specialized in this type of therapeutic modality., being usual to have a team of multidisciplinary professionals in which there are doctors and/or psychologists specialized in this therapeutic modality, so that they are in charge of guiding the sessions and serve as support for the patients when interacting with the dolphins

There are studies that have been carried out on the usefulness of animal-assisted therapies, such as dolphin therapy, which state that in combination with other therapeutic modalities such as medical and psychological treatment, provides motivation to patients (especially to the little ones) because the animals can act as a dynamic element, in a way that facilitates their involvement in the treatment.

On the other hand, it has been seen that animal-assisted therapies can encourage spontaneity in some children who are more withdrawn from participating and interacting with the therapist and it has also been observed that they could promote an improvement in the levels of concentration, attention and stimulation in children because the presence of animals helps to promote multisensory stimulation, so some of these modalities can be an interesting support for psychological therapy with children who present some difficulty at a social level, psychomotor, etc.

It is worth mentioning an innovative and interesting way of applying dolphin therapy, which is dolphin therapy used within virtual reality (VR). It is a therapeutic complement that is carried out through a computer program that allows users to interact with dolphins developed graphically in three dimensions, so that it is expected that they can achieve benefits similar to those they would obtain being in contact with the dolphins but at a lower cost by being able to dispense with similar infrastructures such as those needed to carry out the live dolphin therapy

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How effective is dolphin therapy?

Mental health professionals who defend the use of dolphin therapy recommend it because they have found progress in the activity cognitive level of the people who participate in this therapeutic modality, in addition to the improvement found by the decrease in activation levels, therefore that this calming effect could be advisable for some people with different anxiety problems. However, more research is still needed in this regard to demonstrate its effectiveness.

There is a study on the efficacy of dolphin therapy applied to children with some dysfunction at the psychic in which improvements could be observed in the state of mind, as well as in language and at the psychomotor. There is also another study about dolphin therapy with children with autism that has shown some positive results such as improvements in mood, greater ease of relaxation, increased tolerance for physical contact, increased ability to maintain eye contact, and reduced behaviors stereotyped.

There is a hypothesis that has been developed about the benefits of dolphin therapy in which it is stated that the ultrasonic waves that dolphins emit encourage people who interact with them to generate endorphins, which generates great benefits for your health mental. In addition, It has been postulated that contact with dolphins favors people to generate neurochemical and neurological changes, these being beneficial both physically and psychologically. due to improvements at the psychomotor level, at the social level, in language and in mood.

Another study affirms that dolphin therapy could be beneficial for pregnant women because it helps reduce the discomfort of pregnancy and, on the other hand, On the other hand, there are researchers who affirm that the sound waves emitted by dolphins could favor the stimulation of the nervous system of babies inside the womb maternal.

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Criticism of dolphin therapy

Dolphin therapy is not exempt from criticism directed at its use as a therapeutic modality, some of the arguments against which we will comment on below.

One of the reasons why there are many groups that do not see dolphin therapy with good eyes, such as the activists who fight for animal rights and even some mental health professionals, it is because animal assisted therapy could encourage the confinement of some animals when they could be freely in their natural habitat. In addition, they argue against dolphin therapy that since dolphins are not a domestic animal species, they have a natural tendency to reject being confined in settings such as zoos or parks aquatic.

Another reason why dolphin therapy has generated controversy is because there is quite a discrepancy within the scientific community in the absence of sufficient scientific studies to support the use of this therapy. They have also not been able to prove long-term patient improvements, more studies are needed in this regard.

Another drawback of dolphin therapy is its high cost compared to other therapeutic modalities, such as psychological therapy, in addition to the previous training required by users or patients before starting to swim and interact in the water with dolphins, so perhaps it would be interesting to carry out more research trials with dolphin therapy in virtual reality.

In favor of dolphin therapy, it should be noted that the multiple benefits for mental health of the people who have contact with animals, being a tendency that human beings have had since the prehistory. It can also be of benefit to pets that are well treated by their keepers. On the other hand, although more studies are needed to demonstrate the efficacy of this therapeutic modality, those that have been done so far have shown quite positive results along with promising.