How? Do you have your own alpacas? Really? I can't believe that! How do you get to that?
We get asked this question very often and – as always in life – there are a number of possible answers to questions. The one that isn't a lie, but may not be the whole truth. Or another, more honest answer:
And one of the honest answers to the question asked above - and it may come as a surprise - is that our families are unfortunately very attached to the topic of “mental health” and “mental illness”. In other words, depression, anxiety disorders, psychiatric hospital stays, outpatient therapies and antidepressants are terms that are more than just familiar to us, but sometimes dominate our lives.
And what do alpacas have to do with it? Our 9 alpacas have become a “skill” for us, a resource so to speak, that is simply good for us in difficult but also stable times. We therefore affectionately call them our “9 soul healers with fur” or “9 fluffy therapists in the front yard”. It is not without reason that they are also called “the dolphins of the Andes”.
Our “9 animal family members” are no guarantee that another difficult time will not come our way - as we have experienced over the past year, but for us they are a piece of the puzzle of a hopefully somewhat stable and healthy future .
The animals are not only good for us, but on each of our alpaca hikes near Würzburg we experience how much joy the alpaca animals spread. They radiate an infectious calm and make it possible, at least for a short moment, to forget the stress and brooding of everyday life. With this in mind, we have already organized several alpaca tours for people with disabilities - both physical and mental.
“But especially with regard to mental health, we want to do more in the future given our own background!”
Mental illnesses are anything but a rarity, but are now a problem for society as a whole: IN GERMANY each year, MORE THAN A QUARTER of the adult population suffers from PSYCHIC DISEASE affected.*
Even though acceptance and support has increased massively in recent years and “asking for help” has become easier, we experience first-hand that the “system” still has some work to do and that you often can’t “immediately” respond sometimes you don’t get the “right” help. This starts with months of waiting times for outpatient therapists, for example in special clinics (such as the few clinics for borderlines), the vacuum for patients with severe chronic depression between outpatient and inpatient treatment in terms of close follow-up treatment, the overload of the so self-sacrificing working clinical staff, and many other problem areas.
And then there is acceptance in society. Depression, psychosis and burnout are no longer taboo topics. Nevertheless, as a mentally ill person, you feel like a burden and alone in many everyday situations, even though you are surrounded by so many understanding people and fellow sufferers. Stigmatization and especially ignorance are still a hurdle, which also means that many affected people hesitate to seek professional help.
With these aspects and our experience as patients, we want to be actively involved in the future. We will not be able to adapt the healthcare system around mental illness overnight and simply solve the problems mentioned above. But we want to help alpacas within our framework and with our platform so that hopefully a small proportion of fellow sufferers will benefit from our commitment - even if it's just a sincere smile for a few moments.
One thing is certain: If we could, we would give everyone who is currently not feeling well the opportunity to go on regular alpaca hikes with us. But of course this is not possible to protect the animals either.Many of the problems already mentioned are not limited to the area of “mental health” - the lack of resources, overload and waiting times, inequality in access or lack of prevention vary, but are present in all medical areas. We were also able to find out about this in discussions during one or two alpaca tours for people with disabilities.
Because of our own background, the experiences we have gained and the authenticity, we focus on the area of 'mental illness'. We are already working on one or two ideas that we have in mind - such as the central organization of cooperation between alpaca owners and local clinics in order to establish alpaca llama hikes as part of the supportive therapeutic measures of the clinic concepts.In the near future we will also be offering a range of mental health & alpaca products in our alpaca online shop.
We will then donate 20 percent of sales from the Mental Health collection to selected charitable organizations at the end of each year - such as the Robert- Enke Foundation, to name just one initiative!
We can assure you of one thing: We don't do this because we know better, want to follow a trend or are looking for praise and blame, but because we like the topic - more precisely, the promotion of mental health Initiatives and the proactive development of our own projects - is important to us and we also see a point in becoming more active in this area in the coming years.
