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Companion dog acquisition and mental well-being: a community-based three-arm controlled study

BACKGROUND: Dog ownership is suggested to improve mental well-being, although empirical evidence among community dog owners is limited. This study examined changes in human mental well-being following dog acquisition, including four measures: loneliness, positive and negative affect, and psychologic...

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Autores principales: Powell, Lauren, Edwards, Kate M., McGreevy, Paul, Bauman, Adrian, Podberscek, Anthony, Neilly, Brendon, Sherrington, Catherine, Stamatakis, Emmanuel
Formato: Online Artículo Texto
Lenguaje:English
Publicado: BioMed Central 2019
Materias:
Acceso en línea:https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6829935/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/31684914
http://dx.doi.org/10.1186/s12889-019-7770-5
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author Powell, Lauren
Edwards, Kate M.
McGreevy, Paul
Bauman, Adrian
Podberscek, Anthony
Neilly, Brendon
Sherrington, Catherine
Stamatakis, Emmanuel
author_facet Powell, Lauren
Edwards, Kate M.
McGreevy, Paul
Bauman, Adrian
Podberscek, Anthony
Neilly, Brendon
Sherrington, Catherine
Stamatakis, Emmanuel
author_sort Powell, Lauren
collection PubMed
description BACKGROUND: Dog ownership is suggested to improve mental well-being, although empirical evidence among community dog owners is limited. This study examined changes in human mental well-being following dog acquisition, including four measures: loneliness, positive and negative affect, and psychological distress. METHODS: We conducted an eight-month controlled study involving three groups (n = 71): 17 acquired a dog within 1 month of baseline (dog acquisition); 29 delayed dog acquisition until study completion (lagged control); and 25 had no intentions of acquiring a dog (community control). All participants completed the UCLA Loneliness Scale (possible scores 0–60), Positive and Negative Affect Schedule and Kessler10 at baseline, three-months and eight-months. We used repeated measures ANCOVAs to analyse data with owner age and sex included as covariates. Post-hoc tests were performed for significant effects (p < 0.05). RESULTS: There was a statistically significant group by time interaction for loneliness (p = 0.03), with an estimated reduction of 8.41 units (95% CI -16.57, − 0.26) from baseline to three-months and 7.12 (95% CI -12.55, − 1.69) from baseline to eight-months in the dog acquisition group. The group by time interaction for positive affect was also significant (p = 0.03), although there was no change in the dog acquisition group. CONCLUSIONS: Companion dog acquisition may reduce loneliness among community dog owners. Our study provides useful direction for future larger trials on the effects of dog ownership on human mental well-being. TRIAL REGISTRATION: This trial was retrospectively registered on 5th July 2017 with the Australian New Zealand Clinical Trials Registry (ACTRN12617000967381).
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spelling pubmed-68299352019-11-07 Companion dog acquisition and mental well-being: a community-based three-arm controlled study Powell, Lauren Edwards, Kate M. McGreevy, Paul Bauman, Adrian Podberscek, Anthony Neilly, Brendon Sherrington, Catherine Stamatakis, Emmanuel BMC Public Health Research Article BACKGROUND: Dog ownership is suggested to improve mental well-being, although empirical evidence among community dog owners is limited. This study examined changes in human mental well-being following dog acquisition, including four measures: loneliness, positive and negative affect, and psychological distress. METHODS: We conducted an eight-month controlled study involving three groups (n = 71): 17 acquired a dog within 1 month of baseline (dog acquisition); 29 delayed dog acquisition until study completion (lagged control); and 25 had no intentions of acquiring a dog (community control). All participants completed the UCLA Loneliness Scale (possible scores 0–60), Positive and Negative Affect Schedule and Kessler10 at baseline, three-months and eight-months. We used repeated measures ANCOVAs to analyse data with owner age and sex included as covariates. Post-hoc tests were performed for significant effects (p < 0.05). RESULTS: There was a statistically significant group by time interaction for loneliness (p = 0.03), with an estimated reduction of 8.41 units (95% CI -16.57, − 0.26) from baseline to three-months and 7.12 (95% CI -12.55, − 1.69) from baseline to eight-months in the dog acquisition group. The group by time interaction for positive affect was also significant (p = 0.03), although there was no change in the dog acquisition group. CONCLUSIONS: Companion dog acquisition may reduce loneliness among community dog owners. Our study provides useful direction for future larger trials on the effects of dog ownership on human mental well-being. TRIAL REGISTRATION: This trial was retrospectively registered on 5th July 2017 with the Australian New Zealand Clinical Trials Registry (ACTRN12617000967381). BioMed Central 2019-11-05 /pmc/articles/PMC6829935/ /pubmed/31684914 http://dx.doi.org/10.1186/s12889-019-7770-5 Text en © The Author(s). 2019 Open AccessThis article is distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/), which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided you give appropriate credit to the original author(s) and the source, provide a link to the Creative Commons license, and indicate if changes were made. The Creative Commons Public Domain Dedication waiver (http://creativecommons.org/publicdomain/zero/1.0/) applies to the data made available in this article, unless otherwise stated.
spellingShingle Research Article
Powell, Lauren
Edwards, Kate M.
McGreevy, Paul
Bauman, Adrian
Podberscek, Anthony
Neilly, Brendon
Sherrington, Catherine
Stamatakis, Emmanuel
Companion dog acquisition and mental well-being: a community-based three-arm controlled study
title Companion dog acquisition and mental well-being: a community-based three-arm controlled study
title_full Companion dog acquisition and mental well-being: a community-based three-arm controlled study
title_fullStr Companion dog acquisition and mental well-being: a community-based three-arm controlled study
title_full_unstemmed Companion dog acquisition and mental well-being: a community-based three-arm controlled study
title_short Companion dog acquisition and mental well-being: a community-based three-arm controlled study
title_sort companion dog acquisition and mental well-being: a community-based three-arm controlled study
topic Research Article
url https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6829935/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/31684914
http://dx.doi.org/10.1186/s12889-019-7770-5
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