Animal assisted therapy effect on neuropsychological functioning depression and emotion regulation

Abstract

The mere presence of a dog in a therapeutic setup is known to bring about positive newlineoutcomes, so when incorporated into therapy, dogs can bring multifarious benefits that are not entirely tapped upon. There also exist cultural differences in the perception towards and acceptance of animals which limits the generalisability of western literature. This research aimed to study the effect of animal-assisted therapy, with therapy dogs, on depression, emotional newlineregulation and neuropsychological functioning of individuals. A pretest-posttest experimental research design was used wherein 42 participants were matched and randomly divided into experimental and control groups. Both the groups received therapeutic interventions once a week, for 45 minutes, over a period of 2 months, however, only the experimental group received animal-assisted therapy. Beck Depression Inventory-II, Difficulties in Emotion Regulation Scale newlineand NIMHANS Neuropsychology Battery were used to gauge the level of depression, emotion newlineregulation and neuropsychological functioning before and after the intervention. The findings reveal that both the experimental and control group saw a significant improvement in their level of depression and emotion regulation, however, only the experimental group showed a significant improvement in all the measured domains of neuropsychological functioning. No newlinesignificant changes were observed in the domains of neuropsychological functioning of the control group. The results help validate the animal-assisted therapy interventions provided to improve the individuals neuropsychological functioning, and emotion regulation and alleviate depression. Further implications are identified and discussed as per the results.