A Study On Effect Of Pet Therapy On College Students

Introduction

Animal-assisted therapy (AAT) is a type of therapy intervention that incorporates animal intervention such as dogs, cats and horses depending on the patients’ requests and needs in the therapy process so that the therapy can be directed to achieving to the goals created by the therapists for the patients. This therapy is aimed to improve the patients’ physical, emotional, social or cognitive function through interactions made with the therapy animal

Interaction between humans and animals has existed since ancient times. In fact, in Belgium, pet animals have been used for therapeutic reasons since the Middle Ages as pets were able to provide natural therapy for humans, so they were placed together for rehabilitation reasons. Despite that, the time when animals started to be included in therapeutic work formally was in 1961 by Dr. Levinson. He unintentionally discovered that his patient, a mentally ill boy, was able to interact with his dog, Jingles. Through that discovery, he furthered his research and found out that animals were able to give positive effects on mentally ill patients (Brady, 2017).

Students are known to be under lot of stress and pressure in college. This is because students need to live away from their parents and have to adjust to a new lifestyle where they have to depend on themselves only. Besides that, they need to balance their social needs while carrying the burden of high expectations related to college results and future career aspirations from the people around them. They also need handle the stress from the increasing pile of college assignments while preparing for college exams (Reifman, 2011). One of the ways students can release stress is through animal-assisted therapy. A research on animal-assisted therapy was done in Georgia State University, Idaho State University and Savannah College of Art and Design by investigators regarding students who were undergoing stress due to th2e problems they faced in college. Researchers were able to find out that 84 percent of the students who participated in the program reported that the most significant part of the program was their interactions with the therapy dog, Sophie. The researchers were also able to identify that there was a decrease of 60 percent on self-reported cases of anxiety and loneliness following the animal-assisted therapy programs held in the colleges (Naeurt, 2018).

The main aim of this research is to study the effectiveness of animal-assisted therapy on college students’ improvement on mood, mental health and capability of coping with stress. Few studies have used animal-assisted therapy to investigate its effectiveness on reduction of students’ stress levels, change of mood and the improvement of their mental health and well-being. So, there is much to study about its effectiveness so that the benefits of animal-assisted therapy can become clearer to students and will encourage them to follow on this therapy when needed. Besides that, there is yet to study on why and how this therapy can help students to reduce stress and relax when they are studying and also whether this therapy can help students improve their academic performance and college life. Therefore, this research is aimed to study the effectiveness of animal-assisted therapy on students’ mood, mental health and cope on stress.

Significance of Study

This study is aimed to investigate the effectiveness of the use of animals on helping college students to improve their mood, mental health and ability to cope with stress. Students who are experiencing problems on dealing with stress and pressure from college life can benefit from this study as besides meeting the counselors, students can use the findings from this study to help them solve their problems related to stress and pressure. Besides that, this study could also encourage college administrative to implement animal-assisted therapy in their counseling programs so that it could improve the students’ mood when studying, thus, helps them to ameliorate their academic performance. Proving the effects of this therapy could really help college students because nowadays, many students are facing extreme stress and pressure when studying especially when final exams are around the corner. So, this therapy could be a good alternative for students when they want to relax and release stress from studying.

Purpose of Study

This study is focused on investigating the extent of how much animal-assisted therapy can help college students to solve problems related to stress and pressure due to college life. As students’ mood dampens when they study especially when final exams are near, this study also aims to identify whether the companionship of animals can help improve or lift student’s mood when studying. Besides that, this study aims to investigate the relationship between animal-assisted therapy and how it can help improve students’ mental health and well-being as this therapy was proven by many past researches to have a positive impact on human’s cognitive, emotional and social well-being.

Research Objectives

1. To investigate the level of effectiveness on the use of animal-assisted therapy on college students with problems related to stress and pressure.
2. To study whether the companionship of animals can help improve students' mood when studying especially during exam season.
3. To study the relationship between animal-assisted therapy and the improvement on students' mental health and well-being.

Of late, there are various researches that investigates the relationship between the intervention of animal in improving mental health and reduction of stress levels. Nevertheless, this study focuses on the mental health and stress levels of college students which is one of the main concerns in the society recently. This is due to the rising reports of problems related mental health such as anxiety and extreme depression and many of these problems are caused by the incapability of coping with college life and pressure due to high expectations. Therefore, this study is aimed to help students find better alternatives of helping them solve these problems so that it can reduce possibilities of students using harmful ways to end their problems.

Literature Review

Related studies on the effectiveness of animal-assisted therapy. As animal-assisted therapy (AAT) helps to improve physical, cognitive, behavioral and socio – emotional functioning, it has been known to be an effective treatment for a wide variety of patients experiencing disorders in cognitive, physical and behavioral functioning. This was proven by a research done by them in which they studied the effects of AAT on concentration and attention span of patients with brain injury. The patients had higher self- rated concentration and were more alert in a condition where AAT was incorporated. Besides that, through a study done by Grigore and Bazgan (2017), after attending multiple therapy sessions that included AAT in the treatment program, the autistic children were able to improve their socio-emotional abilities as they were seen to be more talkative to adults, they had more control of their emotions, better at expressing their emotions to other people and can properly interpret emotional expressions. This could probably be due to autistic individuals having better understanding at non-human behavior or in other words, anthropomorphic stimuli. The anthropomorphic stimuli by animals helps improve the social processing of autistic individuals, thus, motivates them to engage in human interaction.

Besides AAT, animals generally can give a feeling of companionship to humans. From Johnson (2017), animals can provide a sense of social support to humans who considers animals to be more than just mere pets. These people consider animals as a friend, family and even a confidant whenever they are going through a hard time. Animals can cure feelings of loneliness to certain people such as the elderly who lives alone. Animals give them a sense of purpose in life and helps them to go through their daily lives (Johnson, 2017).

Related studies on college students and stress. College is a challenging yet important time for students especially for those who just graduated from high school. College life differs greatly from high school. Most students are struggling with college life, they need to face changes from losing a close familial support as they now live far away from their families and at the same time, they need to face academic, social and financial challenges. These challenges become stressors for students and as a result, causes them to have high levels of stress as they go through college as stated by Sajid, Hamid, Sabih and Sajid (2017). They have also stated that high levels of stress can affect students’ academic performances and their social interaction abilities and at the same time, it will encourage unhealthy behaviors that could harm their health and well-being such as substance abuse, smoking, drinking and moral issues. Besides unhealthy behaviour, students’ mental health is also affected by the high stress levels experienced by students. Burwell (2018) stated from a survey that despite having 44 percent of students excelling in college, 39 percent of students were reported to have symptoms of depression and anxiety and one of the main triggers for these symptoms was stress. The influence of stress either direct or indirect on mental health functioning is dangerous as it can lead to suicidal behavior.

Related studies between animal-assisted therapy and mental health and well-being. The use of animals in human medical treatment has long been recorded in history (Jones, Rice & Cotton, 2019). This probably due to the human-animal bond that exists between the two beings. The human-animal bond provides therapeutic and rehabilitative benefits for psychological and medical across a wide variety of settings such hospitals and educational institutions. From Jones, Rice and Cotton (2019), animal-assisted intervention (AAI) can promote the reduction of psychological distress which includes depression, anxiety, trauma symptoms, mental illness and addiction. Furthermore, they stated that for psychosocial variables, AAI helps to improve behavior, communication or social skills for individuals with Autism Spectrum Disorder (ASD).

From Tomaszewska, Bomert and Wilkiewicz-Wawro (2017), therapy cats promote positive emotions such self-acceptance when patients become terminally ill and improves patients’ cognitive skills. Following this statement, they stated that therapy cats were able to reduce patients’ stress, tension, feelings of loneliness and isolation either by providing daily care to the cat or by regular visitations during therapy sessions. Besides that, further studies showed that adults who were participating in trauma treatment analogue that incorporated therapy dogs into the treatment experienced significant reductions in distress and depressive symptoms and youths who had ASD in residential care interpersonal and behavior problems after receiving treatment that included therapy dogs (Jones, Rice & Cotton, 2019).

The paragraphs above have helped me to understand more about terms, methodology and risks that are affiliated with my research. It has given a broader view of the difficulties and process that I might face as I go through this study because most of the past studies that were discussed in the above paragraphs experienced the same limitations and achieved similar results despite being performed in different settings. Furthermore. it has helped me to further carry out my methodology in the following chapter.

Methodology

Participants

The target population of this study are both Sunway College and Sunway University students with an age range of 17 to 24 years old. The students who participated in this study were chosen randomly and no specific characteristics were set besides the age range of participants and where the target population studies. The participants who were chosen were given a link through online group chats applications.

Measures

The instrument used to perform the current is a quantitative method via an online survey form called ‘Google Form’. 2 sets of questions were prepared to differentiate participants owns pets and who did not any pet. Each set of questions comprised of 10 questions each. Almost all the questions were alike in order to avoid any skewed results or results that are not relevant to the study.

Procedure

The research sample was gathered via an online messaging application called ‘Whatsapp’. A link was sent to participants through ‘Whatsapp’. In the link, participants were informed that about the purpose of the study which were for educational purposes and the confidentiality rights owned by the participants on the first page of the survey. The participants were later informed that they were considered giving consent to the survey by answering the survey. After filling all the personal information required, the participants were later separated into two different set of questions depending on their answer related to pet ownership.

Both set of questions comprised of 10 questions each. Most of the questions were yes – no questions and a short answer question was included in the set if questions for participants who answered ‘yes’ to owning a pet. To sum up, the data collected from the survey was very helpful as it helped me to carry out the analysis and write the discussion of the results. In the following section, the study will present the results and reviews of the survey answered by the participants.

Analysis

Most participants who either own or do not own a pet agree that animals do help students release stress, improve mood and their mental health and well-being as most participants answered ‘Yes’ to all the survey questions; this could be seen through the percentage of participants answering ‘Yes’ is higher than the percentage of participants answering ‘No’. This shows that pet ownership does not affect the decisions made by participants when answering the survey questions. Based on the results, all participants agree that spending time with their pets does help them to reduce stress while only one participant disagrees with the question. This is because not all participants who do not own pets prefer to be around animals. So, being around animals when they are stressed can affect them negatively.

Results show that most participants who own pets agrees that their pets play an important role in their lives. This could be justified with most participants’ answers saying that their pets act as their companion especially when they are feeling lonely or stressed. This is because spending time with animals can give a relaxing or calming effect to people especially when they are interacting with animals in the form of playing with the animal or stroking the animal.

Discussion

How do animals help students to reduce stress? The prime question of the study. Referring to the data in tables 1 and 3, animals do help students reduce stress. Based on a study done by Kennedy (2015), she stated that animals can help reduce elevated blood pressure not only by interaction such as stroking them or playing with them, their presence can also give a positive effect to an individual’s blood pressure. Increasing blood pressure is one of physical stress symptoms and if not treated could lead to undesirable situations such as stroke or heart attacks. So, by being in the presence of animals could help reduce blood pressure and thus, help to reduce stress.

Pet owners usually have a deep connection with their pets. So, there were assumptions where pet owners would produce more significant results compared to non-pet owners and this assumption was proven to be correct as the percentage of pet owners who agreed to their pets reducing stress was higher than those of non-pet owners. To justify this, based on a research by Khashbat (2017), pet owners have lower heart rates and blood pressure and lower mental stress when compared to non – pet owners. He further explained that the pet owners consider their pets as better companions than their friends or family members because some pet owners consider their pets as better listeners as they do not judge and are more loyal than humans. This explanation can be further supported through the high percentage where most pet owners agree that their pets play an important role in their lives in table one and also from the answers given by participants in this research when they were asked what roles pets play in their lives. Most participants consider their pets to play as a companion with further elaborated explanations such as a companion when they are stressed with their work or when they are feeling lonely and sad.

Therefore, animals can give effect to students’ blood pressure levels through their presence and interaction, allowing them to be in a relaxed situation and atmosphere and thus, help them to reduce stress.

How do animals affect students’ mood? According to table 1 and 3, many participants both consists of pet owners and non – pet owners agreed that animals do help improve their mood. This shows that many people despite not owning animals can have their emotions be affected positively. Based on a study done by Beets et al. (2012), this is probably due to the role of oxytocin during interaction between people and animals. Oxytocin is a hormone that is produced by the hypothalamus and acts as a neurotransmitter to the brain. Oxytocin, the so-called ‘love hormone’, helps to regulate social interaction and sexual reproduction. It helps to people to form relationships as it helps promote feelings of love and trust between humans and also in human-animal relationships (Milestones, Inc., 2018). Oxytocin affects social interaction by increasing eye contact during interaction, promotes emotions such as empathy and love and it could help people to harness their social skills and treat depressive symptoms such as increasing blood pressure. For example, from a study by Nagasawa et al., they found out that there was an increase in oxytocin levels in pet owners besides the increase in mutual gaze between pet owners and their dogs after researchers administered oxytocin in the dogs causing the dogs’ oxytocin levels to increase (Bekoff, 2015). Relating past studies findings with the current question, when students interact with animals, their oxytocin levels will increase. The increase of oxytocin in their bodies will stimulate their emotions creating feelings of love and warmth towards the animals and thus, will help them improve their mood. Henceforth, the presence of animals and interaction with animals can help increase human’s oxytocin levels and thus, help improves their mood by creating emotions related to love and empathy of an individual.

Why do animals help improve mental health? Most pet owners and non-pet owners agree that animals provide therapeutic effects that help to improve people’s mental health and well-being. The results were in line of what past researchers’ findings. Brooks et al. (2018) explained that animals prevent people from feelings of loneliness, depression, anxiety and many more symptoms that could lead to declining mental health. They further stated that this occurrence happens through stroking and close contact with animals. This is because stroking animals can cause a relaxing and calming effect on people. Furthermore, interaction with animals can serve as treatment for people especially those who are experiencing loneliness and depression. Animals can help people feel loved especially when those individuals are taking care of the animals. This is because animals are usually loyal to people who are taking care of them.

Besides that, interaction with animals can help improve an individual’s social ability and also cognitive abilities such as helping people to produce the right emotions when interacting or reduce aggressive behavior or agitation (Cherniack & Cherniack, 2014). Declining mental health can encourage an individual to be isolated from others and thus, reduce their interaction with others. Through the help of animals, declining mental health can be treated as animals help people to be more interactive not only with the animals itself but also with other people as such that has happened from previous studies where researchers have found that patients suffering from mental health disorders become more interactive during therapy sessions with the help of trained therapy animals.

Therefore, interaction with animals can help improve mental health as it can help people suffering from mental health disorders to improve their cognitive and social skills and also help them to improve their emotions.

Conclusion

Through this research, spending time with animals are found to help students to reduce stress, improve their mood and mental- health and well- being. Plus, animal companions act as an alternative for students to help them cope better with college life based on the answers given in the survey. The findings of this research were able to match with past researchers that have proven that animal-assisted therapy does help students to distress and help them to improve their mental health and well- being as they undergo a stressful and challenging college life.

It is important to note every limitation that occurred in this research. First, the ratio of female to male participants was not balanced as female students were more willing to participate in this research rather than male students. Besides the difference in ratio, participants were unable experience any interaction with animals when participating in the research as the researcher was unable to bring any animals to college premises. So, the answers given by participants of this survey were solely based on their own opinion instead of real-life experience during the experiment. Next, the subject target population was very general. The researcher did not specify any target population such as aiming students who are in the condition where they have high levels of stress like students who are studying for final exams. This is because the period where the research was conducted was not near or during any final exam so researchers were unable to specify the target population.

Future research should include participants interacting with animals or their own pets before answering this survey to get more accurate results. Besides that, future research should measure the participants’ stress levels or depressive symptoms before participating in the research so that researchers can relate the stress levels and the depressive symptoms with the actual results and therefore, conclude that therapy animals can be made as alternative for students to reduce stress and improve their mental health and well-being.