New research evaluates the effectiveness of animal-assisted therapy for adults with depressive symptoms.

The father of psychotherapy, Sigmond Freud, often took his Chow Chow, Jofi, to therapy sessions with him. He valued the calming effect that dogs had on his patients, which he believed helped them to open up and facilitated the therapeutic process. Now, 85 years after Freud’s death, dogs are once again being introduced into psychotherapy in the form of animal-assisted psychotherapy.

Animal-assisted therapy is an umbrella term for interventions which incorporate animals into traditional therapies with the aim of improving therapeutic outcomes. Animal-assisted psychotherapy is a type of animal-assisted therapy which leverages the bond with animals to help build a therapeutic relationship and promote psychological healing and growth. A recent study explored clients’ perceptions of animal-assisted psychotherapy in terms of initiating and facilitating therapy, as well as its effectiveness for treating depression in adults.

New research, animal-assisted psychotherapy

The study took place in an outpatient mental health clinic in the US which specialises in animal-assisted psychotherapy. The interventions were tailored to the individual clients’ therapy goals using a variety of different therapies, including psychodynamic therapy and cognitive behavioural therapy. The animals used included small pets (e.g., dogs, cats, rabbits) and larger animals (e.g., goats, horses, alpacas), which were selected based on client preferences and therapeutic goals. Sessions took place weekly or biweekly and lasted approximately 50 minutes each.

Fifty-one participants completed the modified version of the Patient Questionnaire Depression Module (mPHQ-9), used to diagnose, measure and monitor depression. They also completed an animal-assisted psychotherapy questionnaire developed to capture clients’ overall functioning, psychiatric and behavioural symptoms, and treatment effectiveness, which was administered at intake as well as six months later.

The findings

The results revealed a significant reduction in clients’ symptoms of depression after six months of animal-assisted psychotherapy, with the average post-treatment score indicating that diagnosis of depression would no longer be made. This reduction highlights the potential of animal-assisted psychotherapy to reduce symptoms of depression. However, symptoms of moving/speaking slowly and restlessness did not show significant improvement.

The findings also highlight the importance of animals on participants’ choice to engage in therapy. Participants who rated the animal’s presence as being an important factor in their decision to seek therapy also experienced a larger reduction in their depressive symptoms when compared to participants who rated them as being less important.

Study implications

The study findings suggest that animal-assisted psychotherapy could be a viable treatment for adults with depression. In particular, animal-assisted psychotherapy may offer a way to encourage people to seek therapy who would not have otherwise done so, leveraging the power of the human-animal bond to positively impact treatment outcomes.

However, more research is needed to understand the effectiveness of animal-assisted psychotherapy compared to psychotherapy alone, other types of therapy, and no-treatment. This is because the current study does not include a control condition, making causal inference impossible. For example, participants might have recovered from their depression after six months without any treatment—this is called regression to the mean. Future research should employ a randomised controlled trial design to provide strong evidence about the efficacy of animal-assisted psychotherapy.

Conclusions

The study’s findings revealed a significant reduction in depressive symptoms after animal-assisted psychotherapy, highlighting the potential therapeutic value of integrating animals into mental health care. However, limitations in the study’s design, namely the lack of a control condition, means that a cause-and-effect relationship cannot be established.

Key study findings:

• Clients’ depressive symptoms significantly reduced
• Clients who rated the animal’s presence as important in their decision to seek therapy had more positive treatment outcomes
• Study design limitations mean that a causal relationship cannot be established