Man O' War Project | Horse Racing Free Tips

My sincere thanks to Ms. Sue Finley for the compelling article about the Man O' War Project in the TDN Thursday. I whole heartedly appreciate Earle Mack's support of our veterans.

I have only mentioned my own personal story about PTSD to a few people. Shortly after the attack on Pearl Harbor in 1941 my father left Columbia University and enlisted in the Air Force. He was 17, turning 18. He went to Officers Training School and was promptly shipped to the South Pacific to work in the intelligence corps. His job was to set up airfields for reconnaissance once the Marines had taken an island. You can imagine the carnage he saw with the Japanese scorched-earth policies in full force and in full view to a young man not yet 20. The indigenous people suffered enormously. It affected my father deeply.

When he returned from the South Pacific, he finished up at Columbia, then moved to Lexington to find a position in the horse business. He worked for Keene Daingerfield at the Thoroughbred Record (later, better known as the Dean of Kentucky Stewards). Experiencing difficulty adjusting to civilian life, did he self-diagnose some sort of stress disorder and know that he needed to reconnect with horses to reprogram his psyche? One wonders. The whole concept of PTSD had not yet been identified at that time and men were supposed to buck up and push through the pain. It was a different era. It seems that something inscrutable drew him back to horses and he eventually readjusted to post-war life. He trained horses at Keeneland in the mornings before work in the late '40's while starting a family and working at The Record.

Later in life, when GE hired him for his first real job and he was transferred to Pittsfield, Massachusetts, he took in layups from Suffolk Downs and the vibrant fair circuit in Massachusetts at our farm in Stockbridge. We were just an hour from Saratoga. I remember him taking me to the Travers when Jaipur beat Ridan by a nose in 1962.

He always had horses in his life until just a couple of years before he died, by suicide, at age 49 (when I was 19). My sister and I have often wondered if he had stayed physically connected to horses if he might have made it through the rough patch preceding his suicide and enjoyed a full life.

He only spoke about his South Pacific experience once to me, when I threatened to leave home to enlist during the Vietnam War era, because we had argued, and it had turned violent. I was 18. But he knew that war was as close to hell as life can be and he did not want that for me, or on his conscience. He was gone a year later.

My sister and I have both kept horses in our lives; my wife Mary and I have five retired racehorses at our farm here in Kentucky and my sister has three warmbloods at her ranch in Los Alamos, California. It is our lifeline at times too, and perhaps an homage to our late father who connected us with horses, for life.

The research Earle Mack has funded is meaningful. If it saves one veteran's life, it was worth whatever he invested in the Project. I tip my hat to him and say thanks.

Best regards,

Joel B. Turner

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by T.D. Thornton and Sue Finley

Although using equine-assisted therapies (EAT) to help people overcome post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) has been long believed to be effective via anecdotal results, a recent exploratory scientific study declares that it “is the first to demonstrate that EAT can affect functional and structural changes in the brains of patients with PTSD.”

The findings are groundbreaking not only from a scientific standpoint, but also from the perspective that the peer-reviewed work by Columbia University Irving Medical Center and New York State Psychiatric Institute researchers published Feb. 5 in the medical journal Human Brain Mapping could not only pave the way for national funding for PTSD therapy, but provide homes for untold retired Thoroughbred racehorses.

The study, whose principal funding was provided by the Earle I. Mack Foundation, was based on a three-year program at the Man O' War Foundation, also a project of Mack's. It was supported by a $200,000 grant from The Jockey Club.

The complete study, “Neural changes following equine-assisted therapy (EAT) for posttraumatic stress disorder: A longitudinal multimodal imaging study,” may be downloaded here.

Groups of participants each took part in an eight-week program at the Bergen Equestrian Center in Leonia, New Jersey in a study that was conducted over three years. They were subjected to tests, including MRIs of the brain, before and after the program.

Dr. Xi Zhu, Assistant Professor of Clinical Neurobiology, and first author on the paper said, “This project provides the first neurobiological evidence of the effectiveness of equine-assisted therapy for treating veterans and civilians who suffer from PTSD.”

Dr. Prudence Fisher, Associate Professor at Columbia Psychiatry, who co-led the study with Dr. Yuval Neria, also a Professor at Columbia Psychiatry, said, “The results from this study are very exciting for the hundreds of thousands of Americans who suffer from PTSD.”

Said Neria, a lead author, “The results provide the first-of-its-kind proof that equine-assisted treatment may have not only a clinical promise but also brain-based changes that may increase a patient's capacity to enjoy life despite facing traumas and war adversities, which make this treatment so unique.”

Especially common in combat veterans, PTSD is a psychiatric disorder that occurs in people who have experienced a traumatic event or a long period in which they felt trauma. It can cause flashbacks, nightmares, anger, fear, estrangement, and a lack of trust.

“Improving reward circuitry might be a significant, initial step to finding new and enhanced methods to treat this complex disorder,” the study says.

The Man O' War Project was the first equine-assisted therapy program that wasn't content to rely upon anecdotal evidence, but insisted upon a university-led research study to examine the effectiveness of equine-assisted therapy in treating veterans with PTSD. Founded in 2015 by Thoroughbred owner, philanthropist and businessman Mack, a veteran himself and longtime Thoroughbred owner/breeder, the project was born out of his concern about the mental health crisis facing veterans and his observation of anecdotal stories from various equine-assisted therapy groups, which yet had no hard science to support their results.

In a 2019 interview with the TDN, Dr. Jeffrey Lieberman, MD, Professor and Chair of Columbia Psychiatry and one of the driving forces behind the program, criticized the effort that had previously been put forth by the United States, and praised Mack for his innovative efforts.

“I know it works,” Lieberman said. “This is a very simple, intuitive therapeutic process that the government hasn't seen fit to deal with sufficiently, and civic-minded people are stepping in. But taking it at face value, that's not the way medicine and science works. You've got to prove it. And Earle was willing to submit this hypothesis to rigorous testing in the form of a clinical trial and that makes all the difference.”

Because the model is tested and proven, it can be replicated all over the country, delivering badly needed new treatments for a devastating disorder. The therapy is particularly suited to ex-Thoroughbred racehorses, who, like veterans, had a very short, intense career, and are mission-oriented.

“I am grateful for the dedication and excellence of the Columbia University team in seeing this project through with compelling results beyond our expectations,” said Mack, “validating EAT as a very effective and much-needed therapy for veterans with PTSD. We look forward to future phases allowing for the mainstream implementation of the Man O' War protocol.”

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