Swimming with dolphins doesn’t confer any benefits, physical or mental. The dolphin-assisted therapy (DAT) might be a favoured fad among some in the West, but it is just that, nothing more, new research shows.

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 have concluded that there is no reliable evidence that it actually works. If anything, they say, it may even prevent patients from seeking more effective and traditional forms of treatment.

Some tend to think that Dolphin-assisted therapy (DAT) could prove effective in the case of children with disabilities. The therapy typically occurs in marine parks and dolphinariums as part of programs that allow people to swim with dolphins. Children receiving DAT go through focused one-on-one sessions of individualized activities with a therapist (e.g., a speech, occupational, or physical therapist depending on the child's disability) where interactions with dolphins follow a child's correct cognitive, physical, or social-emotional response.

Large numbers of these programs operate in countries throughout the world, including Mexico, the United States, Israel, and Russia. Proponents claim that DAT can effectively improve language, behavior, cognitive processing, attention, motivation to learn, and certain medical conditions. Dolphin-assisted therapy programs have received highly favorable notice from the media, including television news programs, adding to its popularity.

British scientists 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 had the same likelihood of success - and failure - as having the patient interact with a small puppy.