Karin Hediger

Research shows that animal-assisted therapy has good effects in reducing pain, anxiety and distress in patients with specific health problems. For others, animal-assisted therapy leads to less problematic behaviour or more social interaction, communication and adaptive functioning of the patients. Karin Hediger tells you more in her TEDx Talk.

Karin Hediger is an endowed professor of Anthrozoology at the Open Universiteit and a full professor at the University of Basel, Switzerland. She is a licensed psychotherapist and child and adolescent psychologist, has a certificate in animal-assisted therapy, a diploma in equine-assisted therapy, and founded a center for animal-assisted psychotherapy. She is passionate about developing and evaluating interventions for children, adolescents and adults with a wide range of disorders who find it difficult to engage with conventional therapy programs. She is particularly interested in how the human-animal relationship can be used therapeutically and how we can learn from this relationship to improve interpersonal relationships. Her aim is to apply and research new animal-assisted interventions and to learn what the human-animal bond means for people.