The Horse Boy is a 2009 documentary that focuses on the life of a young boy named Rowan who has autism and his parent’s journey to find alternative medical. This four-year-old boy struggles through daily activities and exhibits things like seizures, difficulty using the bathroom, distant and sheltered behavior, and violent tantrums. With these symptoms, he exuberates behavior of disease because it is affecting his physical wellbeing but in reality, this would be considered an illness. Autism causes an individual’s brain to develop differently and to process information at a different rate. His parents tried a variety of methods like a healthier diet, exercise, different doctors, etc. Nothing was helping. Until one day, Rowan’s father Rupert noticed that his son had a somewhat strange connection to animals, especially horses. He seemed to be more calm and tamed, but so did the animals. It’s like they knew that Rowan had autism and they were submissively acting in his favor to help with his …show more content…
They traveled throughout Mongolia on horseback and by van in search shamans who could have a miraculous cure for Rowan’s autism. After traveling for hours, Rowan and his parents finally reached the first shaman. They were told that their son had a relative, specifically from the mother’s side, who had a mental state similar to Rowan’s that was being channeled through his body. This would explain all of the crying, screaming, violent tantrums that Rowan has been experiencing. This differs from what we are told in the western hemisphere. When we think to autism, it is associated with brain development and mental illness. To those in Mongolia, we could clearly see that their forms of alternative medicine have to do with the spiritual world rather than the medical