You don’t have to know your way around a horse to ask about an equine program. “Would I have to ride?” is a perfectly reasonable first question. We’d add another: “Is this therapy, and who would be providing it?” The words on a brochure don’t always make that clear.
Our family at Nunley Family Farm has a military and law enforcement background. That helped bring us to animal-assisted and nature-based work, but it doesn’t make us mind readers. You might want to ask about a quiet farm experience. Someone else might be asking specifically about treatment. We’d like to hear what brought you to the phone before suggesting an offering.
Ask What The Appointment Actually Is
A guided visit to a farm can be worthwhile without being psychotherapy. For equine-assisted psychotherapy, you’re talking about mental health treatment: an appropriately licensed clinician must be working within their scope, with equine expertise supporting the horse side safely. We’d ask who is doing what, not rely on the word “therapy” alone.
You can see structured programs, veteran and first responder support, and guided farm experiences among our published offerings. Our About page describes Sarah Nunley as a doctor of psychology and licensed mental health professional. Those credentials are relevant, but there is still a practical question for your booking: who is leading this particular service, and is it clinical or nonclinical? Let’s get that answered before you drive out.
It May Happen On The Ground
Riding isn’t part of every equine-assisted program. In some researched programs, participants groom or lead horses on the ground. That may give someone a task to focus on or an opportunity to practice communicating and asking for space. The activities depend on the particular program and its safety assessment. A study carried out elsewhere isn’t a description of what your visit here will include.
We’d also be careful about reading too much into a horse’s reaction. A horse may move away because of handling, movement nearby, its surroundings, or its own needs. It isn’t diagnosing PTSD. Nor is it judging whether you tried hard enough to relax. There’s no need to turn every step the animal takes into a verdict about the person standing beside it.
An Encouraging Study, With Limits
Here’s one paper we can actually point you to: https://doi.org/10.4088/JCP.21m14005. Fisher and colleagues published it in The Journal of Clinical Psychiatry in 2021. They enrolled 63 veterans with PTSD in an eight-session program, using a manual and pairing a licensed mental health professional with an equine specialist to lead it. The reported PTSD and depression symptoms fell, and improvement was still present when participants were followed up three months later. That’s the encouraging part.
We find that worth discussing. We also need to discuss what the study couldn’t establish. There wasn’t a randomized comparison group, and many participants continued existing treatment. So we can’t separate the effect of the horse activities from everything else happening in their care and lives. The findings don’t show that this approach beats established PTSD treatment. They certainly don’t give every farm program permission to promise the same results.
What Happens When Studies Are Read Together?
For a broader look, we’d read the 2023 systematic review, “Equine-assisted interventions for veterans with posttraumatic stress disorder,” at https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC10654975/. Ten studies went into that review. The authors saw promise, but there was a lot they couldn’t settle from the available work. Some samples were small. Controls were limited, follow-up wasn’t consistent, and the programs themselves differed.
That’s why we’d hesitate to take one positive result and apply it to every appointment involving a horse. Staff, activities, and outcome measures vary. Someone feeling better after a session matters, of course. But that observation doesn’t answer the same question as a controlled trial following symptoms over time. We’d be wary of a sweeping claim that horses reliably “reset” a veteran’s nervous system. The evidence here doesn’t establish that.
Talk To Us Before You Come
Being unsure around a large animal isn’t something you need to hide from us. Neither is an allergy or a mobility concern. We’d rather hear about those things while discussing the appointment. Precautions matter, but they can’t eliminate a horse’s ability to kick, bite, or react unexpectedly. And please get a confirmed appointment before coming; arriving at the farm doesn’t mean there’s an activity you can join that day.
Already working with a PTSD clinician? Bring this idea into that conversation. It may be considered as added support alongside care, not as a replacement for evidence-based therapy or prescribed medication. We wouldn’t want a hopeful first visit to become a reason to stop treatment. There isn’t a particular feeling you have to achieve here, and we can’t guarantee a recovery outcome.
For the published service descriptions, see our offerings! If you’d rather start with a question, reach Nunley Family Farm in Hohenwald, TN, at (951) 202-7727. Call and ask about the appointment, the animals, or who would be there with you. That is enough for a first conversation. Your whole story can wait.