Abstract
This novel, exploratory study investigated the effect of a short, 20 min, dog-assisted intervention on student well-being, mood, and anxiety. One hundred and thirty-two university students were allocated to either an experimental condition or one of two control conditions. Each participant completed the Warwick–Edinburgh Mental Well-Being Scale (WEMBS), the State Trait Anxiety Scale (STAI), and the UWIST Mood Adjective Checklist (UMACL) both before, and after, the intervention. The participants in the experimental condition interacted with both the dogs and their handlers, whereas the control groups interacted with either the dog only, or the handler only. The analyses revealed a significant difference across conditions for each measure, with those conditions in which a dog was present leading to significant improvements in mood and well-being, as well as a significant reduction in anxiety. Interestingly, the presence of a handler alongside the dog appeared to have a negative, and specific, effect on participant mood, with greater positive shifts in mood being witnessed when participants interacted with the dog alone, than when interacting with both the dog and the handler. These findings show that even a short 20 min session with a therapy dog can be an effective alternative intervention to improve student well-being, anxiety, and mood.
Highlights
Animals frequently play a visible role in human society, both in the context of companionship and work [1]
A variety of evidence, both anecdotal [2,3] and empirical, has demonstrated that these human-animal interactions can have a positive impact on human health and well-being, through animal-assisted interventions (AAIs), animal-assisted coaching (AAC) [4], animal-assisted activities (AAA) [5], and more recently animal visitation programs (AVPs) [6]
Forty-five participants took part in a standard Therapet session (TP), where participants interacted with both a handler and their dog; 41 participants were allocated to a control condition where participants interacted with a dog only (DO); with the remaining 46 participants taking part in a control condition in which the participants interacted with a handler only (HO)
Summary
Animals frequently play a visible role in human society, both in the context of companionship and work [1]. A variety of evidence, both anecdotal [2,3] and empirical, has demonstrated that these human-animal interactions can have a positive impact on human health and well-being, through animal-assisted interventions (AAIs), animal-assisted coaching (AAC) [4], animal-assisted activities (AAA) [5], and more recently animal visitation programs (AVPs) [6]. The vast majority of previous research on AAI and AAA focuses on clinical populations [7]; there is a growing body of evidence that suggests that animals can have a positive influence on well-being, and quality of life, in non-clinical populations [8,9,10,11,12]. Research indicates that students show significantly lower mental health functioning, and higher levels of stress, in comparison to their non-student peers [14], suggesting that the implementation of effective intervention strategies within higher education are of extreme importance
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