Swimming with dolphins may not have any health benefit

An article by David Thomas in the Telegraph:

Its therapeutic qualities have been linked with the treatment medical conditions ranging from depression to autism and dementia.

But swimming with dolphins, or dolphin-assisted therapy (DAT) as it is scientifically known, may not actually have any mental or physical health benefits to human beings at all, according to new research.

In a scientific paper for the journal the Archives of Disease in Childhood, paediatricians Anna Baverstock and Fiona Finlay of the Community Child Health Department in Bath concluded that there is no reliable evidence that it actually works. And they say that it may even prevent patients from seeking more effective and traditional forms of treatment.

Baverstock and Finlay conducted the review because a mother was seeking medical support for her son and they needed to determine whether swimming with dolphins had any health benefits for children with cerebral palsy. They found that at best, it has the same likelihood of success - and failure - as having the patient interact with a small puppy.

The news will come as a blow to the multi-million pound dolphin-assisted therapy industry, which insists that playing with the intelligent marine mammals can help people suffering from a wide variety of conditions.

Various enterprises operate in resorts the world over promoting trips to swim with dolphins in the wild. Other schemes involve swimming with dolphins in tanks.

Previous studies have backed the use of swimming with dolphin to help people's recovery.

In 2005, a University of Leicester team tested the effect of regular swimming sessions with dolphins on 15 depressed people in a study carried out in Honduras and published in the British Medical Journal.

The team found that symptoms improved more among this group than among another 15 who swam in the same area but did not interact with dolphins.