Ahava Therapy and Wellness Center

At Ahava Therapy and Wellness Center, our main goal is to serve our community by offering a comprehensive Equine Assisted Therapy program to treat PTSD, anxiety, depression and other stress disorders resulting from acute or recurrent trauma. Our Therapy Program is here to specifically serve Veterans, Active Military, First Responders, Victims of Sexual Assault and Victims of Domestic Violence.

Equine Assisted Therapy (EAT) is practiced around the world and is widely-used to treat a variety of Stress disorders resulting from trauma. Horses are highly sensitive to the slightest change in the emotions of the others in their herd, which means they can sense inconsistency between how we are feeling on the inside and how we are acting on the outside allowing us to treat the hidden wounds of trauma. The statistics below emphasize the scope of the problem and the motivation behind our organizations mission.

There are approximately 8 million people with PTSD in the United States each year. Of those, 50% are victims of sexual assault or sexual abuse, that is over 4 million victims each year. In 2018 alone with only 25% of adult sexual assaults being reported, there were approximately 734,000 cases but it is estimated that the real number is closer to 2.9 million.

According to National Sexual Violence Resource Center (NSVRC), in the U.S., 1 in ever 5 women will experience an attempted or completed sexual assault in their lifetime, with 30% of them experiencing their first sexual assault between the ages of 11 and 17 years old. Approximately 24% of men of Men will experience some type of contact sexual violence in their life time with 25% of them experiencing this sexual trauma between the ages of 11 and 17. Considering these numbers, we can estimate that approximately 33 million females in the us and approximately 40 million males will experience sexual assault in their lifetime. Of these potential 73 million victims of sexual assault, 94% of them will develop some type of PTSD.

For military veterans, approximately 30% develop PTSD (thats over 2.4 million veterans). This does not include active duty military. The consequence of this issue is devastating. Approximately 22 Veterans commit Suicide each day in the U.S., that is twice the national average for the general population.

Over 45% of battered women develop PTSD through a single incident or systematic abuse. For Firefighters/EMTs PTSD occurs at a rate of 15% and for law enforcement an estimated 13% develop PTSD. These numbers do not even include Active Duty Military, Trauma Doctors, Nurses and Staff, or children who have suffered from child abuse trauma either them selves or witnessing domestic violence in the home.

After looking at these statistics it makes what we do even more important. Our mission is To harness the strength and spirt of the horse to provide healing and restore hope to our Heroes and the countless Victims of Sexual Assault, Abuse and Domestic Violence.