Pet Therapy - a Trend or a True Stress Reliever?
There are many stress-relieving therapies becoming more and more popular around the world. One of them being pet therapy - especially at big college campuses. Being a dog lover and interested in all sorts of therapy, pet therapy definitely intrigued me. I wanted to find out whether it was just a trend or if interacting with these dogs actually reduced stress levels here at the University of Michigan in undergraduate students. So, I set to work.
First, I wanted to find out what exactly pet therapy was and how it started. Pet therapy, or “Animal-Assisted Therapy”, is “a scheduled encounter with a certified therapy team consisting of an animal and its handler for the purpose of supporting or improving …show more content…
After reading about it’s history, I wanted to see the general research/experiments that had been done on pet therapy, so I began looking for any experiments that had been done regarding pet therapy and college undergraduates. I was in luck - I found three different articles almost immediately. The first article was called “Effects of Pet Therapy on the Psychological and Physiological Stress Levels of First-Year Female Undergraduates” by Chesika Crump and Terry L. Derting. The article was about experiments searching for whether or not animal-assisted activities (AAA) reduced physiological and psychological stress levels of undergraduate women. In the experiment, the treatment was interaction with therapy dogs and the control was engaging in non-stressful activities such as reading or playing cards. The researchers used a “Stress-Arousal Checklist” and stress-arousal scores to measure the participants stress levels throughout the experiment. They also used an “Upper Arm Blood Pressure Monitor” to measure the participants’ heart rates and blood pressures. The study found that the “treatment had a significant negative main effect on …show more content…
Thrasher, a similar experiment was done, but with surprisingly different results. (see below)
From this chart one can see that heart rate (HR) went up in the group with dog interaction and went down in the breathing exercise group. This is a different result than what the previous experiment found. Even though the first articles results were the ones I was looking for, I knew it was important to take both results into consideration, and not just throw out results that do not support my
There are many stress-relieving therapies becoming more and more popular around the world. One of them being pet therapy - especially at big college campuses. Being a dog lover and interested in all sorts of therapy, pet therapy definitely intrigued me. I wanted to find out whether it was just a trend or if interacting with these dogs actually reduced stress levels here at the University of Michigan in undergraduate students. So, I set to work.
First, I wanted to find out what exactly pet therapy was and how it started. Pet therapy, or “Animal-Assisted Therapy”, is “a scheduled encounter with a certified therapy team consisting of an animal and its handler for the purpose of supporting or improving …show more content…
After reading about it’s history, I wanted to see the general research/experiments that had been done on pet therapy, so I began looking for any experiments that had been done regarding pet therapy and college undergraduates. I was in luck - I found three different articles almost immediately. The first article was called “Effects of Pet Therapy on the Psychological and Physiological Stress Levels of First-Year Female Undergraduates” by Chesika Crump and Terry L. Derting. The article was about experiments searching for whether or not animal-assisted activities (AAA) reduced physiological and psychological stress levels of undergraduate women. In the experiment, the treatment was interaction with therapy dogs and the control was engaging in non-stressful activities such as reading or playing cards. The researchers used a “Stress-Arousal Checklist” and stress-arousal scores to measure the participants stress levels throughout the experiment. They also used an “Upper Arm Blood Pressure Monitor” to measure the participants’ heart rates and blood pressures. The study found that the “treatment had a significant negative main effect on …show more content…
Thrasher, a similar experiment was done, but with surprisingly different results. (see below)
From this chart one can see that heart rate (HR) went up in the group with dog interaction and went down in the breathing exercise group. This is a different result than what the previous experiment found. Even though the first articles results were the ones I was looking for, I knew it was important to take both results into consideration, and not just throw out results that do not support my