Animal-Assisted Therapy in Clinical Rehabilitation

Dear Colleagues,

Animal-assisted therapy is the inclusion or animals within clinical interventions with humans to achieve specific therapeutic goals. Animals may be included in the delivery of clinical care because they are expected to reduce patients’ anxiety, stress, or clinical symptoms, increase patients’ engagement in therapy, or increase their interaction with practitioners. Animal-assisted therapy is an emerging extension to clinical practice in many areas of healthcare. Animals may also be engaged in healthcare services to support human clinicians, without necessarily interacting directly with patients.

We are pleased to invite you to contribute to this Special Issue of Veterinary Science focused on the contributions made by assistance animals and therapy animals to the clinical care of humans. We are seeking manuscripts from across the breadth of human clinical practice, including medical, nursing, and allied health interventions, as well as alternative and complementary therapies. We also welcome studies exploring the value of the engagement between therapy animals and clinicians, as well as studies investigating the health, comfort, and wellbeing of therapy animals during their work.

In this Special Issue, we aim to include original research manuscripts, particularly clinical trials and systemic reviews of clinical trials of animal-assisted clinical interventions. Although we expect that most studies will include domesticated animals, submissions are not limited to specific animal species.

We look forward to receiving your contributions.

Dr. Lainie Cameron
Dr. Samanatha Brown
Guest Editors

Manuscript Submission Information

Manuscripts should be submitted online at www.mdpi.com by registering and logging in to this website. Once you are registered, click here to go to the submission form. Manuscripts can be submitted until the deadline. All submissions that pass pre-check are peer-reviewed. Accepted papers will be published continuously in the journal (as soon as accepted) and will be listed together on the special issue website. Research articles, review articles as well as short communications are invited. For planned papers, a title and short abstract (about 250 words) can be sent to the Editorial Office for assessment.

Submitted manuscripts should not have been published previously, nor be under consideration for publication elsewhere (except conference proceedings papers). All manuscripts are thoroughly refereed through a single-anonymized peer-review process. A guide for authors and other relevant information for submission of manuscripts is available on the Instructions for Authors page. Veterinary Sciences is an international peer-reviewed open access monthly journal published by MDPI.

Please visit the Instructions for Authors page before submitting a manuscript. The Article Processing Charge (APC) for publication in this open access journal is 2100 CHF (Swiss Francs). Submitted papers should be well formatted and use good English. Authors may use MDPI's English editing service prior to publication or during author revisions.