EN-Fitram

Fitram history

2009/08/23

The “fed. Int. of therapies and helping relations through mediation” is born in 2005, after a congress where doctors, physiologists and psychotherapists decided to built a federation to work together on the construction of bases of competences and formation in the different fields where we use mediation .
After a two years probation where we still worked with the actual grouping, the fitram was agreed by the Council.
Today the federation unites about 10 different States and 30 associations.
In this paper we limit our work to the section “mediation through animals”

The Public

Persons with disabilities of all ages .Especially children and young adults with big difficulties of integration in school and society(mental health, justice, psychiatry) and old people who regress because of their loneliness , especially when being away from home.

Mean Ideas

For us, prevention is not to tell them but to listen to them, so to understand why the information goes not through. On the other side, we think that it is necessary to work with the groups surrounding the person: her family, her environment. Prevention needs time: it needs not much money for a short time, but efficient money for a long journey!

Mean methods: good practices joined (France, Luxemburg, Spain, Poland)

When the person cannot, for different reasons, join the human group, she often feels the animal as the own friend: so the animal becomes a very efficient partner in the relation between this person and her therapist.
Through the animal, a therapist can observe the feelings of the patient, his emotions, the real person behind the walls he has build against society: to day neurolopsychology so as biology can help us to understand how to face these difficulties which are deeply implanted in the mind of the person and cause difficulties in his body, his brain, and his heart.
The work with and through the animal may bring the individual back to the person he really is, and give him the desire to become an efficient link in society.

Results

In different associations which work on psychosocial rehabilitation, comparing the results , after 2 years, with similar methods without animals, we notice a difference from 40./. (from 35./. without animals to 75./. with them).
But the question is: “will it remain,”: the animal must grow, in the mind of the patient, from real being to a symbol: all his future partners have to work with this symbol: but all of them are not prepared to do so.

Concerning old people

It is noted a regulation of the heart disorders, and other health difficulties: the use of medicaments diminish.
The intellectual activities are better, so as the social ones.
So the person remains independent for a longer time

Efficiency compared with cost

In a first time, the costs are increased because of the animal (especially the horse) and the need of many competences for working with both animal an human beings.
But in a second time, the persons will stay in society rather then to go to prison or hospital: and then the price will be ten times more!
We know that prevention needs a long time to be efficient but often the politics don’t want to consider that!

Our difficulties

Today, in most of the States, this work through animals is not officially recognized: so it is not possible to impose rules and methods, so as competences : everybody can do everything!
Through European programs like L. da Vinci we hope to become a European recognition of the bases needed to work in this field.