Impact of animal-assisted therapy on subjective anxiety ratings and objective blood pressure measurements in children in an outpatient psychiatric setting

Streszczenie

Introduction: The aim of this study was to evaluate the level of anxiety and blood pressure measurements with and/or without a therapy dog in follow-up child patients who presented to the outpatient setting for evaluation.

Materials and methods: Participant population included 34 patients in the paediatric outpatient psychiatric clinic. Participants were randomly assigned to the “dog group” or the “alone group”. The subjective anxiety rating scale assessment tool and objective systolic and diastolic blood pressure measurements were obtained twice: pre and post encounter.

Results: Two-way ANOVA of systolic and diastolic blood pressure revealed no significant main effects (p = 0.767 and p = 0.192, respectively). There was no difference in improvement of post-encounter subjective anxiety rating scale score compared to pre encounter subjective anxiety rating scale score (p > 0.999).

Conclusions: The findings of this study did not show statistically significant differences in the level of anxiety either by physiological or psychological measures in the setting of animal-assisted therapy (AAT). However, verbal benefit expressed by patients and family was noted. Further study may be warranted with a larger sample size and using other anxiety rating scales with simple language that is more understandable to children.