Press Release

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

Building Resilience: HCF Grant Expands Equine-Assisted Psychotherapy for Fire-Impacted Residents at Haku Baldwin Center

MAUI, HAWAI’I – October 17, 2024 – Haku Baldwin Center (HBC) launched its equine-assisted psychotherapy program in August 2023 in response to the Maui Wildfire Disaster, largely supported by a grant from the Maui Strong Fund by the Hawai’i Community Foundation. A second round of funding has allowed HBC to continue offering free sessions for fire-impacted residents, ensuring continuity of care—a critical component of mental health services for clients experiencing trauma.

Sonja Bigalke-Bannan, a licensed clinical social worker at HBC, shares the work she and the team have been doing to support fire-impacted residents through equine-assisted psychotherapy sessions. "Having been on-site since January of this year, we've really built relationships with clients. We're seeing individuals, families, and groups—most of them fire survivor families or first responder families. The importance of seeing somebody for more than just a couple of sessions after an incident is that trauma is not a one-and-done situation. It’s not an easy fix. Seeing people over time and providing support throughout the year following the fire has been crucial. Primarily, we’re seeing folks come out every week and we're able to develop rapport and make real progress toward their treatment plans. We’re seeing a significant reduction in anxiety, reductions in disturbances, reduction of recurring nightmares and intrusive thoughts, and a reduction of feeling hyper-vigilant all the time,” Bigalke-Bannan explains.

Bigalke-Bannan joined the program in January 2024 and leads weekly sessions alongside Program Director and Equine Specialist Chrissy Stout. “This type of specialized therapy is typically costly, requiring a two-person treatment team and a herd of therapy horses, but with the Maui Strong Fund’s support, we can offer these services at no cost, removing financial barriers for those in need. Our community is still hurting, and for survivors of natural disasters and those in underserved communities, this type of therapy is often out of reach, with subsidized sessions being their only option. By working with horses in this unique way, mental health professionals provide a safe, non-traditional, and supportive environment for those recovering from trauma. HBC’s innovative approach has been critical for fire survivors who come to us when other options have proven ineffective, are unavailable to them for various reasons, or typical therapy is insufficient on its own. This grant has been vital to our ability to serve our community in this way,” says Stout.

Client feedback has been overwhelmingly positive. One spouse of a first responder shared: "In a world where preventing natural disasters and curing mental illness seems impossible, life can be unmanageable. Maui lacks resources ... the horses have been a huge blessing. Normal therapy didn't help, but with this team, therapy is natural. Our family benefits, and it's a breath of fresh air to experience this type of therapy."

Bigalke-Bannan describes the need for continuation of services for fire-impacted residents through 2024. “This grant allowed us to continue to see clients. Being able to see them at the one-year anniversary was crucial. The time leading up to the one-year anniversary of this fire was fraught and difficult for clients. There were memorial events that brought up a lot of a lot of feelings and a lot of memories. There were some smaller fires around the same time. So being able to lean into the healing that they've done, leaning into the self-soothing coping mechanisms that they’ve been learning in these last nine months has been really incredible—being able to bring those things together and provide support as we're at the one-year anniversary and beyond. Because for a lot of our clients, this isn’t necessarily the first traumatic experience they’ve had in their life. With complex trauma, we know that new traumatic events bring up lots of old memories and old trauma as well. So, not only are we working to heal the recent trauma, but we're also doing deep-down work that involves healing childhood trauma or trauma from combat service earlier in their lives or work-related trauma for first responders that happened prior to the fire.

We've been working on normalizing coming to therapy—what it’s like reaching out for help and reaching out for services when someone needs it. With family therapy, we have been able to model what seeking help looks like to children, and hopefully, they’ll be able to implement that as something that they can do for the rest of their lives when they reach difficult milestones or difficult situations in their lives. The horses provide a real sense of security when we're working with clients in session. Horses are also very vigilant themselves, so we’re able to ask clients to let go of some of the hyper-vigilance and let the horses take it, because there's so much more sensitive than us”, says Bigalke-Bannan.

While being interviewed, Bigalke-Bannan stands in one of the facility’s pastures with Gabe, a gentle draft horse that has captured many hearts in the program. Offering an in-the-moment example, she adds, “See, right now, he's triggering to something to the side. He's watching the cars as they're coming up the driveway. He sees them and hears them and knows they’re there long before I do as a human being.  So, it’s really a gift to be able to let the horses kind of carry that and act as the sentinel during sessions and give clients a break, and let them be able to let their guard down and release some of that, so they can experience what some stillness is like during sessions.”

Since 2013, Haku Baldwin Center has offered services to military personnel. Bigalke-Bannan reflects on how this population has also been impacted following the fires: “Several of our clients are veterans and come with combat trauma and historical trauma that they bring to sessions. They also were traumatized by their experiences in the fire. So, not only have we worked on trauma related to the fire, but sometimes we're working on old things that are coming up. Sometimes it’s trauma that is very much the night of the fire, sometimes we’re working on trauma, but it's very much ‘we’re back in Vietnam’ and we are not sure where we are. This kind of work, again, helps to really ground clients. It helps to really understand—the horse was not in Vietnam, so we can use the horse to reorient to where we are now. To know place, time, and safety. Because the horse is here, the horse is very much a solid, movable object that helps us understand that we are safe, we are in the present, and that we are working on seeking safety and creating places and safe spaces.”

Thanks to the generosity of this grant, the program has expanded to include equine-assisted learning sessions (EAL) for children impacted by the fires, offering lasting benefits beyond therapy sessions. “Using our evidence-based, trauma-informed curricula, children can develop more positive emotions, thoughts, and behaviors that support their overall well-being. These sessions provide a safe physical and emotional space where both horses and children can freely interact and learn from each other. Horses have a unique ability to promote positive outcomes, especially for children living with disabilities or those who have experienced Adverse Childhood Experiences (ACEs). Through equine-assisted learning, children can engage in nature-based play and learning, discovering, growing, and building valuable life skills such as self-regulation, empathy, and self-confidence. The special connections they form with the horses and with each other help to boost positive childhood experiences that can have a lasting impact”, explains Stout.

And finally, Bigalke-Bannan stresses the importance of understanding the terminology used in this field: “I wanted to touch on for a moment what equine-assisted psychotherapy is. It is mental health treatment with a licensed mental health provider. Sometimes, people throw around different terms “equine therapy” or horse therapy”. It's not therapy unless you have a mental health clinician involved. So we're careful to use the terminology “equine-assisted psychotherapy”. It is evidence-based, using treatment modalities that have been around for a long time. The reason we need a licensed clinician involved is that things come up. Trauma is difficult. Trauma is tricky. When someone re-experiences, when someone gets flooded, when someone has a flashback, we can do more harm than good, even if our intentions are very, very good and we have a big heart and we want to help. If we light up trauma and we light up memories for folks and then don't help them to be calm, to be in a good place when they leave, we can do more harm meddling. You can get in over your head very quickly if you're not a clinician. So, it's really important in this work that we do that, not only is someone experienced in the horse world, but they're a mental health clinician. We use a two-person treatment team model; I'm a licensed mental health provider and also a horse person, and Chrissy is my equine specialist. The two of us work together to make sure that the people and horses are safe, and that everyone is comfortable with what we’re doing, both two-legged and four-legged.”

To learn more about Haku Baldwin Center’s equine-assisted psychotherapy and other programs, visit https://hakubaldwincenter.org. If you are a fire-impacted resident interested in exploring mental health services for you or a family member, contact Chrissy Stout at chrissy@hakubaldwincenter.org.

For media inquiries, please contact:
Chrissy Stout
Program Director, PATH Intl. CTRI
Haku Baldwin Center
Email

About:
Haku Baldwin Center is a 501(c)(3) nonprofit organization located on Maui, Hawai‘i, dedicated to promoting the therapeutic, educational, and recreational benefits of human-animal interaction. For over 30 years, Haku Baldwin Center has served the community through a variety of programs that enhance the lives of individuals with diverse needs and military veterans. To learn more, visit https://hakubaldwincenter.org.

Photo Credit: Haku Baldwin Center therapist Sonja Bigalke-Bannan, LCSW, interacting with therapy horse, Gabe.
Photo Link: https://drive.google.com/file/d/11mt8JW-PzBYFudIJrnDg-t-J3hVhMHDH/view?usp=sharing