Gateway HorseWorks

Gateway HorseWorks incorporates horses for the mental health treatment of people.

Since our founding in 2015, Gateway HorseWorks (GHW) has served many populations who need more than traditional talk therapy to continue or begin healing. Our approach is focused on a ground-based approach (meaning horses are not ridden) facilitated by a Licensed Mental Health Professional and an Equine Specialist certified in the Eagala Model. Because the horses offer honest and truthful feedback in the moment, people are able to become aware of their conscious and unconscious intentions and energy. The horses’ behavior challenges clients to reflect upon their own attitudes, emotions, body language, and boundaries, and highlight any incongruences that might exist. This nonjudgmental feedback from the horses provides an opening for people to begin to experience themselves differently. Then the treatment team helps clients understand, access, and validate the information, and begin to translate their awareness into action in their everyday lives.

In addition to individuals and families who self-refer or are referred by therapists to the farm for issues like anxiety, depression, eating disorders, addiction, PTSd, and sexual trauma, we offer a number of community-based programs which are free to participants. These programs serve:

• People in recovery with Gaudenzia West Chester (Breaking Free)

• Veterans experiencing PTSd with Coatesville and Philadelphia VA Medical Centers (Galloping Home)

• Justice-involved and dependent youth with Chester, Delaware, and Montgomery Counties' Children, Youth, and Family Services and Juvenile Probation Offices (Beyond the Barn)

• Families experiencing loss and grief with Penn Hospice (Stable Connections) • People experiencing incarceration onsite at the Chester County Prison Complex (Stable Pathways)

• Youth in the School District of Philadelphia (Leading the Way)

Innovative mental health interventions, as well as access to horses, have historically been an exclusive, elite experience. GHW is committed to dismantling this lack of accessibility to innovative mental health care and EAP with sustained intention. 20% of adults and 17% of youth in the US experience mental illness and the CDC ranks suicide as the 10th leading cause of death (National Alliance on Mental Illness). Those with high Adverse Childhood Experiences scores have the greatest need for trauma-informed treatment and benefit most from it since trauma rewires the brain’s emotional and sensory centers. But mental health treatment is woefully underfunded and inaccessible for those who are under-insured or uninsured due to its cost. Treatment solutions that work are generally only covered by costly, elite insurance plans that are out of reach for so many who’ve faced the greatest trauma. GHW provides a place where all people in our community have access to growth, transformation, and recovery.

Gateway HorseWorks is changing the mental health paradigm, providing effective, accessible innovative mental health treatment to those who need it most.