The following research was done as a junior social work major at Bethel College for a research class. I learned a lot about how much animals can assist with mental health and it led to me applying for an animal-assisted therapy certification in my MSW program.

Abstract

Animal Intervention has increased in the past few years, especially after the COVID-19 Pandemic. During this time, many people felt symptoms of depression, anxiety, and loneliness and chose to aid those symptoms by adopting a pet. This data led to increased research about how animals affect mental health. Animal Intervention and Animal-assisted therapy are now more abundant in schools, workplaces, hospitals, and retirement homes. My question is, how does extended animal intervention therapy affect a college student’s mental health?

Literature Review

Many people have found comfort in having an animal companion, so it is seemingly impossible to find someone who did not grow up with or currently has a pet. Psychologists and social workers alike have realized this and started incorporating animals into their practice, whether a therapy dog sitting in during a counseling session or a service animal visiting a retirement home or hospital.

Animal Intervention Therapy is something that I hold very close to my heart and something that many people of all ages, groups, cultures, races, and backgrounds can benefit from. I chose to focus on Animal Assisted Therapy and how animals can help mental health because I have an Emotional Support Animal (ESA) that lives with me in the college dorms and provides a safety net for my mental health. I am looking at how animals can impact mental health for this research.

Search Strategies

I used the search terms Animals, Mental Health, and College Students for this research. I broke those search terms up into smaller keywords such as Dogs, Cats, Service animals, and Animal Therapy (Animals); Emotions, Processing and Health (Mental Health); and Students, Academics, Young Adults, and College (College Students). Using these search terms and keywords, I found my sources using Academic Search Premier, JSTOR, and Google Scholar.

How can animals help mental health?

Animals can be incorporated into helping someone's mental health through animal-assisted interventions, animal-assisted therapy, and animal-assisted activities. Emotional Support Animals, Service Animals, and pets are outside a clinical setting.

A study done on clients from The Royal Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals New South Wales Community Programs (RSPCA NSW) from 2021 to 2022 found that “the human-animal bond is highly valued by people experiencing crises, that the human-animal bond is highly valued by people experiencing crises (defined as a short-term overwhelming situation that disrupt an individual’s normal state, causing stress and social isolation (Oosthuizen, 2023)), that the bond can affect people’s ability to seek help or refuge, and that the bond helps people to recover after a crisis (Bretzlaff- Holstein 2017; Oosthuizen, 2023).”

The RSPCA NSW Community Programs are designed to help people in crisis; in this study, people affected by domestic violence, aged care, and homelessness could participate. This shows that even when it is just a regular house pet, animals can significantly affect our mental health. The clients of RSPCA NSW spoke highly of the organization allowing them to keep their pets with them and said that it increased their want and drive to make changes to improve.

Difference between Emotional Support and Service Animals

Many must learn the difference between an emotional support animal (ESA) and a service animal. The main difference is that ESAs are used for emotional assistance, and service animals are required to perform specific tasks. Service animals are protected by the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA), whereas ESAs are not; this means that service animals can go into society with their owners and usually have a type of documentation of their training or a harness to show they are working. In contrast, ESAs are not allowed in public spaces. There are some exceptions to this, as some colleges have started allowing ESAs to live with students if there is a proven need by a physician or therapist. ESAs can include many types of animals, including reptiles, birds, cats, and dogs. These animals are untrained to aid with mental health or medical support and are used to provide companionship and support to the owner (Hahn, 2020).

Service animals, on the other hand, are trained, usually by a professional or someone with a disability, to aid them in their day-to-day life and help make life easier for those with impairments. Some examples of this aid are guide dogs, medical alert dogs (for blood sugar, seizures, etc.), dogs that aid in calming PTSD patients by checking rooms, or dogs trained with a specific task to help with psychiatric disability. Dogs are usually most used for these services, but there are instances of using other animals, such as monkeys and horses (Hahn, 2020; Lauth, 2020).

Relationship between pet ownership and loneliness

Not only can ESAs and service animals help with disabilities and emotions, but normal pets can as well. A pet is “an animal kept for pleasure or companionship (Kretzler, B.).” Many people keep pets as companions and a way not to feel lonely. In a study done in 2018 and 2019, it was found that there is “an association between pet ownership and lower levels of frailty and higher levels of physical activity … Pet ownership was shown to be related to lower levels of depressive symptoms and anxiety (Kretzler, 2022).”

Different types of Animal Therapy

Having a regular house pet or an ESA can significantly improve your mood and provide you with a companion who can help lessen stress and anxiety. However, there are other ways in a clinical setting where animals can help your mood and mental health. You can find animal-assisted interventions such as animal-assisted therapy and animal-assisted activities.

Animal-assisted therapy is a structured treatment plan done in a clinical setting that uses animals to help make it easier for clients to achieve goals concerning their “physical, social, emotional, or cognitive functioning (House, 2018).” The animals within this type of therapy can include termites, fish, dogs, cats, rabbits, and horses, although a study done with the RSPCA NSW found that dogs are more likely to increase physical and social health. In contrast, cats are best for companionship relating to emotional health and hospital settings (House 2018 and Oosthuizen 2023).

Animal-assisted activities (AAA) are group activities with service dogs or service dogs visiting hospitals, elderly, or college students. With college students in particular, research has found that “AAT and AAA programs can reduce levels of anxiety and loneliness and increase students’ perception of their social support on campus (House 2018)” (House, 2018; Kamioka, 2014).

Human and Animal Bonds

Human and animal bonds can be essential, especially to pet owners. Most pet owners consider their pets part of their family and grieve their absence or loss as such. In the study done by the RSPCA NSW, they found that most of the people within their program who were experiencing homelessness would instead give up housing than have to get up their pets. They also looked at the bond between animals and inmates. They saw it could motivate inmates to develop life skills and responsibility and provide relief and companionship after leaving jail (Oosthuizen, 2023 Risley-Curtiss 2010).

Relationship between pets and happiness during COVID-19

Although there is much research on how trained service animals can help one's mental health, there is not an abundance of research on how having a pet may affect one's mental health until 2020, during the COVID-19 pandemic. This may be due to the rise of loneliness, depression, and anxiety that the pandemic brought, which resulted in more people adopting pets. A study completed by the American Pet Product Association in 2021 found that during the pandemic, the number of households within America with a pet rose to 70% of homes, the highest it has ever been (Kretzler, 2022).

During this time, many people went out to adopt dogs, and it led to an increase in physical activity among these pet owners, which lowered the rates of depression, anxiety, and feeling trapped (Kretzler 2022 and Morgan 2020 ). Although these animals may have helped during the pandemic when the world started returning to normal, there was a surge in owners being anxious to leave their pets they got during the pandemic; this led to an increase in dog abandonment. This could be related to “health, economic, and social stresses, as well as the inconclusive reports of companion animals being potential COVID-19 carriers (Morgan, 2020).”

Research done before the pandemic has shown positive and negative correlations between pet ownership and loneliness. During the pandemic, there was a surge of evidence that owning a dog benefits one's mental health. Studies done with cats showed increased happiness, but the owners reported feeling socially isolated (Kretzler, 2022; Morgan, 2020).

Animal Intervention in Schools

With new research about how animals can affect one's mental health and an increase in ESAs and service animals after the pandemic, many schools have started implementing service animals into education to reduce stress and anxiety in students, primarily found in elementary schools and colleges (Curl, 2023; Krause-Parello, 2018).

Young Children and Animal Assisted/ Intervention Therapy

Children can greatly benefit from being around therapy dogs, specifically during AAT and AAA. In a classroom study in 2006, researchers found that dogs can contribute to elementary students’ emotional stability and positivity toward other students. It was also found that children in therapy sessions with dogs had an increased attention span and openness to communicate with professionals. It was also found that not only could dogs help with their emotional and mental health, but when reading out loud to therapy dogs in a classroom setting, students reported feeling more relaxed and confident in their academic abilities (Friesen, 2010; Krause-Parello, 2018; Leos 2023, and Wilson 2021).

With more research about children becoming more relaxed and open around animals, forensic interviewers have started incorporating the presence of therapy dogs in forensic interviews with children who have been sexually abused. This research showed that with the dog's presence, they were more open to talking to the interviewer and seemed more relaxed than those in the control group (Pendry, 2020).

College Students and Animal Assisted/ Intervention Therapy

College students are highly affected by stress, anxiety, depression, and homesickness, so it is no wonder that colleges would be turning to having therapy dogs on campus, as well as allowing ESAs. “According to the American College Health Association (ACHA), approximately 33% of college and university students report experiencing anxiety, depression, stress, and other mental health concerns (Hahn, 2020).”

Because of this, many colleges have started letting students have pets or ESAs in their housing. Most students and their roommates in this situation have “reported higher self-esteem, less loneliness, and better physical fitness than non-pet owners and acknowledge that pets supplemented their social needs (Hahn, 2020).” Concerns with this have been the student needing to disclose medical information that they may want to be kept private to the school board and allergies of other students in the dorm rooms. To combat this, most colleges that allow this have protocols to ask students about animal allergies and have resident buildings for students with pets (Curl, 2023).

Some colleges have used therapy dogs as a way for students to take a break from their studies and advertise their mental health resources on campus. When comparing mental health resource visits with and without the presence of a therapy dog, students said that they were more likely to come back and felt more relief than those in the control groups without dogs who said they might come back and still felt anxious or homesick (Evans 2012 and Grajfoner 2017).

Summary

This research shows that animals can benefit many people, especially those dealing with stressful childhood, college, and adulthood, and can help those with disabilities. There is much research on how animals can help college students, but there is a lack of research that provides a mental health screening/ survey before students meet with therapy dogs and after they meet with them. There is also a need to look at multiple sessions with therapy dogs and screenings for those visits, making me wonder how extended animal intervention can benefit college students. My research question is, In what way does extended animal intervention benefit college students?

Methodology

In this section, I will be going over the cognitive-behavioral paradigm, how I would collect my data, the recruitment, the process, how I would store the data, and how I would split up the themes. My qualitative research would include a mental health survey before and after an animal intervention. Students would spend 30 minutes with a therapy dog during this animal intervention. Before and after this intervention, I would sit down with the students and ask them questions about their mental health. I plan to do this process three times to collect data on how the participant's mental health evolved.

Paradigm/ Theory

The cognitive-behavioral paradigm is the cornerstone of my research. This paradigm combines cognitive and behavioral theories and comprehensively explains mental health. In my study, the mental health survey represents the cognitive aspect, while the behavioral aspect is the animal intervention and the interactions with the therapy dog. By analyzing the qualitative data collected, I aim to draw meaningful conclusions about the impact of animal interventions on college students' mental health.

Data Collection

For my data collection, I would use a mental health survey. I would combine questions from the Columbia-Suicide Severity Rating Scale (C-SSRS) and the Patient Health Questionnaire 9 (PHQ-9) into a Qualtrics survey. I would then have students complete this survey before and after their animal intervention.

Recruitment

Participants will be recruited through an email that will go out to the whole student body of Bethel College. The email would explain that I am researching sustained animal intervention therapy, and the participants would have to fill out a survey before and after spending 30 minutes with a therapy dog. The only risks to the students would be if they were allergic to the dog or if the dog were to jump on them. The email would also include the fact that if the participant is allergic to dogs, they will be asked not to participate.

Therapy Dog Recruitment

I work for Blue Skies Pet Care LLC. in Newton, KS. This company helps train therapy dogs, and the dog trainer (Vanessa) has two fully trained therapy dogs. I have already discussed the experiment with her. Her two dogs (Lana and River) will meet students as a form of animal intervention therapy. The owner (Vanessa) would be in the room during the intervention to comfort the dogs.

Process

Once Bethel College students respond to the email to participate, I would send out a survey, also made on Qaultrics, with different intervention times they can come to. These would be 50-minute blocks: 10 minutes to complete the survey, 30 minutes with the dogs, and 10 more minutes to complete the survey again.

When participants arrive for their animal intervention time in the William Academic Center social work interview rooms, I will email them the survey link. Once they have completed it, I will go into the interview room with them and sit with them while they interact with the dogs for 30 minutes.

Once the time is up, we will exit the room, and I will ask them to fill out the survey again. I will have desks with privacy folders for the participants to fill out these surveys without other students looking. This process would repeat three times, with one week between each meeting. Once this is done and each participant has completed it three times, I will review the answers from their initial mental health survey and compare them to their last survey.

Storage of Data

The data recorded will be stored on my Qualtrics account and my Google Drive through bethelks.edu. Passwords protect both accounts, which are on a computer that only I know the password to. The surveys will not ask for names but will be assigned by number, so not even I will know who filled out the survey. Once I am done with the data, it will be deleted from my laptop and accounts.

Data Analysis

For the data analysis, I would compare the first surveys to the second and last surveys to see if there is a correlation between positive feelings and spending time with the dogs or negative emotions. Outside factors may affect the feelings and the way participants fill out the survey. Therefore, I could not say that the dogs helped mental health or made it decline, but I could tell there may be a correlation.

Conclusion

Animals have a prominent effect on humans' mental health, whether as pets, ESA, or service animals. Because of the research on this subject and the evidence that it can help depression and anxiety, animal intervention may be beneficial to a college campus. Many college students suffer from depression and anxiety, especially on the Bethel College campus, as proven by the mental health survey that went out in 2023. This could be combated by bringing service animals to campus for the students to spend time with.

Benefits and Drawbacks

The benefits of bringing animals on campus for students to interact with would be very high. Students would likely feel a boost of morale and motivation, especially around stressful times like the beginning of semesters, midterms, and finals. It would also aid in addressing homesickness, as most students have grown up with a pet in their home. Research proves that students may also feel a reduction in stress, anxiety, and depression from interacting with service dogs. These levels of their mental health could be monitored by mental health surveys being given out to the population of students who regularly interact with the service dogs, as well as the population that does not.

Drawbacks to this research would need funding for the owner of the service dogs to be on campus because it would be taking away from their day and preventing them from going to their regular job. Some companies can bring service dogs in regularly but need funding to pay for them. Another drawback would be to put the service so that many students can access it. It may be good to put it in the William Academic Center near the current therapist's office, but another drawback of having them in the building would be that they might expose students to allergens and cause them harm in that way.

Limitations

Limitations to this research may include students' busy schedules, accessibility, allergies, and student participation. Students at Bethel have hectic schedules between work, class, extracurricular activities, and social life. It may be hard to find when students can come in to spend 30 minutes with the service dogs, and the time they can come in may interfere with the time that the owner of the service dogs/ organization can be there.

Accessibility may also be an issue depending on where the animals are on campus. The William Academic Center and the Student Center may be good options due to their wheelchair-accessible paths. However, a lack of space on pathways or crowds when classes are let out or during mealtimes might make it seem cramped or crowded to students with disabilities.

Allergies are also significant to think about on a college campus. A population of students on campus may be allergic to dogs or have a fear of dogs. Therefore, putting the service dogs in a central building where they may interact with these students would not be beneficial. The service dogs would be contained to a room and not out in the open, so there would be an opportunity to put signs up saying that there is a dog in that room and an opportunity to send out an email to all students and faculty to let them know where and when the dogs would be on campus.

Contributions

This research would significantly contribute to the Bethel College campus and could aid the mental health committee by seeing if students' mental health improves from the dogs on campus. Bethel College needs more ways to care for its students' mental health, which could help the college figure out how to help the students. This would also benefit the students who participate in the research, especially since if they signed up, they may enjoy spending time with animals. It would also benefit the animals as they would receive love and affection.

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Animal Intervention with College Students