A new study by researchers at Sacred Heart University in Fairfield shows potential benefits of interacting with therapy dogs for high school students.
The study, published in the journal Frontiers in Psychology, found high schoolers were less stressed after interacting for 10 minutes with trained therapy dogs.
Researchers obtained saliva samples from a small group of students — 74 high schoolers in Connecticut and New York. They measured levels of the stress hormone cortisol before and after the canine interaction. The students also self-reported stress levels.
“We were seeing decreased levels of stress and increased self-efficacy, which is confidence and feeling like you can really persevere through a challenging task,” said Dawn Melzer, the study’s lead author and professor of psychology at Sacred Heart.
It's not the first time pets have been shown to provide emotional support. Therapy dogs help with emotional regulation at high stress moments including the death of a classmate, motor vehicle casualties and homicide, said Brad Cole, executive director of K9 First Responders, an organization in Milford that assists people after potentially traumatic events.
“Dogs can lower communication barriers so that volunteer responders can talk to kids and make the crisis counselors’ job easier,” Cole said.
The goal of this, he said, is to “deescalate from a state of high arousal to walking, talking and chewing gum.”
In their study, researchers from Sacred Heart found preliminary associations between stress relief and canine interactions, though they cautioned more work is needed to establish a causal effect. They plan to pursue another, larger study with a control group to find out how long the results last. They're now concluding a different study with college students.
