More threads by David Baxter PhD

David Baxter PhD

Late Founder
Animal-assisted therapy and the effects it has on people
by dcvaughan
Fri, 11/07/2008

At the doggie daycare that I work at, we offer a Therapy Dog training class. Recently, I've had the pleasure of assisting with these classes and for the final week we took the dogs (and their owners) to an assisted living center here in Madison. It was so nice to see the faces of all the residents as we walked in with the dogs: they just seemed so happy to see us. This experience inspired me to write about therapy dogs and the affects they have on the people they visit.

Animal-assisted therapy involves the interaction between trained animals, in my case dogs, and the patients. The aim of this interaction is to help the patient's progress toward a certain therapeutic goal (whether that be to get better faster, lower anxiety, lower blood pressure, or just raise the patient's spirits).

The first article that I looked at discussed the affects that therapy animals have on the anxiety ratings of hospitalize psychiatric patients. This particular paper studied whether or not the patients' anxiety levels would be lowered after having a session with animal assisted-therapy. The article didn't specify how long the patients interacted with the dog. After a session, significantly lower anxiety levels were found for patients with psychotic disorders, mood disorders, and other disorders. The study compared these lowered anxiety levels to the anxiety levels of patients who underwent the routine therapeutic recreation. They found that only patients with mood disorders had lowered anxiety levels after routine therapeutic recreation while the animal assisted-therapy lowered anxiety levels for patients of many diagnoses.

The second article that I looked at discussed the affects of animal-assisted therapy on loneliness in an elderly population in long-term care facilities. For this study the authors gave the residents a survey to fill out before they were exposed to the animals. The use of the survey showed that the residents who had volunteered to take part in the study had a live-history of emotional attachment to pets and wished that they were able to have a pet now. The groups of residents that were able to interact with the dogs showed significantly lowered loneliness scores in comparison to the residents who were not able to interact with the dogs.

The third article that I looked at discussed the affects of AAT on patients with cancer. This article observed the affects on mood, fatigue, self-perceived health, and sense of coherence. Participants in the study were randomly assigned to have 12 dog visits, 12 human visits, or 12 quiet reading sessions over a four-week period. The results of this study showed that there were no significant differences between the three therapy routines. It was found, however, that patients receiving dog visits viewed their health as improved over the four-week period. I find the results of this experiment a bit surprising and would be interested to find if they had different results in a larger sample.

Animal-assisted therapy is something that can be very beneficial on a person's state of mind when they are hospitalized or in assisted living situations. Of course, the affects of AAT are likely to be more significant if the patients have a life-long history of having an attachment to animals. There are a lot of articles out there discussing the affects that AAT has physiologically on patients (either lowering or raising levels of chemicals that influence our attitudes and moods).

References:
  1. Barker, Sandra B., and Kathryn S. Dawson. "The Effects of Animal-Assisted Therapy on Anxiety Ratings of Hospitalized Psychiatric Patients." Psychiatric Services (1998): 797-801.
  2. Banks, Marian R., and William A. Banks. "The Effects of Animal-Assisted Therapy on Loneliness in an Elderly Population in Long-Term Care Facilities." The Journals of Gerontology Series A: Biological Sciences and Medical Sciences (2002): 428-32.
  3. Johnson, Rebecca A. "Animal-Assisted Activity Among Patients With Cancer: Effects on Mood, Fatigue, Self-Perceived Health, and Sense of Coherence." Oncology Nursing Forum 35 (2008): 225-32.
 
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