234 Paws for a Cause: Stress relief using therapy dogs

Abstract

Therapy dogs have commonly been used to relieve a number of different types of stress in people ranging from PTSD to the more simple stresses of daily life. On a university campus, two of the most stressful times for a student are during midterm and final examinations. The objective of this study was to quantify the effectiveness of therapy dogs to relieve stress and/or anxiety during major exam time periods. To accomplish this, therapy dogs were made available for students to interact with during the week of midterms and finals. Students voluntarily completed a short survey after their visit with the therapy dogs. On the survey, students (n = 168) recorded demographic information and assessed their stress level before and after interacting with the dogs on a 15 cm line scale where greater numerical values indicated a greater level of stress. Across all participants, stress levels were greater (P < 0.01) prior to interacting with a therapy dog (10.4) than afterwards (4.4). This suggests that, regardless of gender, interacting with a therapy dog is highly effective in reducing stress as noted by the almost 60% reduction in stress level observed in the current study. When investigating differences between genders, females indicated greater stress levels (P = 0.02) compared to males before interacting with a therapy dog; however, no difference was detected between genders (P = 0.94) in stress level following their interaction with a therapy dog. These data suggest that females may perceive a greater level of stress about midterm and final exams than males, but the therapy dogs were effective in reducing stress to a similar level in both genders. While interacting with a therapy dog may not completely remove the stresses in one's life, it may help deal with those stressors by bringing the stress level down to a manageable level.