The Ville-Evrard donkey therapy programme, running every Friday at the Neuilly-sur-Marne hospital complex near Paris, is producing outcomes good enough that its organisers now want formal scientific research conducted so the model can be offered across France. Patients report feeling calmer and less isolated. Staff observe the change. The couple who built the programme from scratch are pushing for the evidence base that could make it standard care.
How the Ville-Evrard Donkey Therapy Programme Works
Each Friday, patients at Ville-Evrard who are living with psychiatric disorders, anxiety, schizophrenia, loneliness, and related conditions make their way to the hospital’s wooded farm sanctuary. There they spend time with a small herd of therapy donkeys: Nono, Pitou, Oscar, Manolo, and Malraux. Some patients ride in carts pulled by the animals. Those who feel ready take on a more hands-on role, cleaning the donkeys’ hooves. Others simply stand close and receive a quiet nuzzle. Attendance is free.
According to A-Z Animals, the Ville-Evrard complex is home to around 400 human patients, and the farm sanctuary now houses not only the donkeys but also guinea pigs, chickens, doves, goats, turtles, and rabbits. The range of animals means sessions can be tailored to what a patient is ready for on a given day, a consideration that matters when the population includes people in acute distress.
Married couple Ermelinda and François Hadey launched the project for the hospital. Ermelinda, a psychiatric therapy nurse, had long believed in the therapeutic value of animal contact. The pair settled on donkeys as the centrepiece: domesticated thousands of years before horses, donkeys have a reputation for gentleness, sociability, and patience that made them a natural fit for work with vulnerable patients. The first donkeys trained by François arrived in 2016.
Patients and Staff Describe What Changes on Fridays
Jérôme, a 52-year-old patient, put it plainly to reporters. ‘Talking with people, taking part in activities I wouldn’t normally do, it helps me in my daily life,’ he said. ‘It helps you break away from the routine of treatment and medication. Staying at home isn’t good for me.’ For Jérôme, and for others who described the sessions as bringing ‘relief’, the farm visit is not a distraction from treatment but an extension of it.
Alicia Fabi, an 18-year-old nursing student working at the hospital, told the Associated Press that the effect on patients is consistent and visible. ‘Every time we come back from the activity, they say they feel good, calm and relaxed, and that they enjoyed the outing. That’s really positive,’ she said.
The candour in both accounts is worth noting. Jérôme does not claim the sessions are transformative; he says they help with daily life and break a cycle that isolation worsens. Fabi reports what patients say, not what she has measured. Both reflect something the programme’s organisers openly acknowledge: what exists so far is observation and self-report, not a clinical trial. That gap is precisely what the Hadeys and the hospital now want to close.
The Case for Standardising Animal-Assisted Care
The programme’s success to date is real but informal. Ville-Evrard and the Hadeys are seeking proper scientific research into how and why the sessions work, with the goal of producing evidence strong enough to support a national rollout. Without that research, animal-assisted therapy in psychiatric settings remains dependent on individual champions (a married couple here, a sympathetic hospital administration there) rather than on replicable, funded protocols.
Donkeys carry some cultural baggage as the less glamorous relative of the horse, but the logic behind using them is sound. Bred over millennia to carry heavy loads steadily across long distances, they tend towards calm in the presence of distressed humans. The anxiety a patient brings to a session is, as the programme’s description puts it, ‘no sweat’ for an animal accustomed to far weightier burdens.
The next step for the Ville-Evrard donkey therapy programme is securing the research partnerships that would let the data speak as clearly as Jérôme already does.
