The evidence for pet theraphy

Pet theraphy, or animal assissted therapy, can be defined as the use of animals for the purpose of helping to improve specific aspects of the physical, mental, cognitive and social wellbeing of people. The most common forms of pet theraphy are the use of guide and hearing dogs as well as animal visitation programs for hospitals and nursing homes.

People traditionally benefiting from pet therapy are people with some need of assistance such as the visually impaired or hearing impaired; however, assistance dogs are currently being used for a range of conditions including epilepsy, autism and heart disease. Despite the obvious benefits of "working" dogs, the idea of pet therapy is that it increases your levels of activity and social interaction, and may help to decrease your blood pressure, cholesterol, triglyceride levels and of levels isolation.

The evidence for the benefits of pet therapy on depression is scarce. While conducting a brief internet search I found only one scholarly article that cited beneficial effects of pets for anxiety patients of varying degrees of severity. Although I did find an article that studied pet therapy and depression in adult college students (Bingo!), I could not determine if pet therapy was beneficial or not despite the reported significant differences between the effects of psychotherapy, pet therapy and a control group. This is because as a broke graduate students I could not pay $22.90 to download the article and satisfy my curiosity (but if you find out please let me know). However, there are several web pages suggesting that pet therapy can help with depression, ranging from health sites to the ones that try to sell you pet products (you name the sin, not the sinner).

Despite this, it appears to be common knowledge that having a pet can improve your mood, just type "depression and pet therapy" in any community page like yahoo answers or ezinearticles.com. Exercising outdoors, alone or with a pet, does help to treat depression. Having a pet has been shown to increase longevity, to provide more opportunities for social interactions (particulalrly of you have a labrador as opposed to a rottweiler), and to help you maintain your emotional health by providing increased opportunities for physical contact (if you are subscriber of the "four hugs a day" preciption).

Hence, provided that you can afford the time and the money investment required to own a pet, and that you are not allergic to one, I would suggest to go ahead and hope for the best.

Graduate students, depression and pet theraphy

Like 24% of graduate students surveyed by the 2004 Berkeley Graduate Student Mental Health Survey, I am between the moderately to severely depressed bracket. This is not uncommon for graduate students who unfortunately appear to have a higher incidence of depression and other related problems. What is unusual is the length of this depressive episode that appears to have lasted close to two and a half years compared with the average of 4 to 6 weeks for managed cases to up to 12 weeks for untreated cases.

As a result, I have tried everything under the sun from medication to meditation, from cognitive behavioral theraphy to exercise and dietary changes. All these can be useful and are part of my arsenal of tools to fight the black dog and try to complete my research. Unfortunately my experience is that some times individual tools or a combination of approaches seem to help for a while but I invariably return to the starting point following times of high stress.

Hence, I have run out of rational options, which leaves me with the following untested tools:

• A new pair of good socks - which will keep the depression away once I pull them up.
• Exorcism - I may actually be the victim of demonic possession and require the services of a priest to get rid of my depression.
• Pet therapy - something that gives me love, satisfaction and keeps my mind away from my PhD in my allocated rest times to help me to concentrate in my work time.

In the following weeks I will argue the need to keep a pet to help with depression, the many aspects to consider when selecting a pet, and the challenges of selling a pet to a highly reluctant husband... wish me luck.