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Pet Presence Can Reduce Anxiety in the Elderly: The Italian Experience during COVID-19 Lockdown Assessed by an Electronic Survey

The lockdown imposed in Italy due to the COVID-19 outbreak required restrictions that severely limited individual freedom to protect the population and reduce virus diffusion. This situation psychologically challenged the entire Italian population but mostly the elderly. The “Digital mental health a...

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Detalles Bibliográficos
Autores principales: Giansanti, Daniele, Siotto, Mariacristina, Parisi, Laura, Aprile, Irene
Formato: Online Artículo Texto
Lenguaje:English
Publicado: MDPI 2022
Materias:
Acceso en línea:https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC9142058/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/35627672
http://dx.doi.org/10.3390/ijerph19106135
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author Giansanti, Daniele
Siotto, Mariacristina
Parisi, Laura
Aprile, Irene
author_facet Giansanti, Daniele
Siotto, Mariacristina
Parisi, Laura
Aprile, Irene
author_sort Giansanti, Daniele
collection PubMed
description The lockdown imposed in Italy due to the COVID-19 outbreak required restrictions that severely limited individual freedom to protect the population and reduce virus diffusion. This situation psychologically challenged the entire Italian population but mostly the elderly. The “Digital mental health approach” employs digital tools to evaluate and prevent increasing mental health problems. “Anonymous online electronic surveys” are digital tools that assess rates of mental health outcomes (using for example self-assessment/awareness tools). Immediately at the beginning of restrictions, we designed an electronic survey a) to remotely investigate the psychological impact of the lockdown and b) to compare the anxiety between pet owners and not-pet owners. A total of 3905 subjects filled out the survey; we focused our study on 781 (20%) elderly subjects. Dividing elderly patients between pet-owners (n = 405) and not-pet owners (n = 376), the pet owners showed a Zung scale score significantly lower in respect to the not-pet owners. We observed that, during the COVID-19 outbreak, the pet presence could have a positive effect on anxiety in the elderly subject. These results: (A) encourage the use of mobile technologies for the assessment of psychological disorders that can be promptly employed in emergencies such as the COVID-19 outbreak; (B) highlight the positive effect of pet interaction to mitigate the psychological distress in elderly people.
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spelling pubmed-91420582022-05-28 Pet Presence Can Reduce Anxiety in the Elderly: The Italian Experience during COVID-19 Lockdown Assessed by an Electronic Survey Giansanti, Daniele Siotto, Mariacristina Parisi, Laura Aprile, Irene Int J Environ Res Public Health Article The lockdown imposed in Italy due to the COVID-19 outbreak required restrictions that severely limited individual freedom to protect the population and reduce virus diffusion. This situation psychologically challenged the entire Italian population but mostly the elderly. The “Digital mental health approach” employs digital tools to evaluate and prevent increasing mental health problems. “Anonymous online electronic surveys” are digital tools that assess rates of mental health outcomes (using for example self-assessment/awareness tools). Immediately at the beginning of restrictions, we designed an electronic survey a) to remotely investigate the psychological impact of the lockdown and b) to compare the anxiety between pet owners and not-pet owners. A total of 3905 subjects filled out the survey; we focused our study on 781 (20%) elderly subjects. Dividing elderly patients between pet-owners (n = 405) and not-pet owners (n = 376), the pet owners showed a Zung scale score significantly lower in respect to the not-pet owners. We observed that, during the COVID-19 outbreak, the pet presence could have a positive effect on anxiety in the elderly subject. These results: (A) encourage the use of mobile technologies for the assessment of psychological disorders that can be promptly employed in emergencies such as the COVID-19 outbreak; (B) highlight the positive effect of pet interaction to mitigate the psychological distress in elderly people. MDPI 2022-05-18 /pmc/articles/PMC9142058/ /pubmed/35627672 http://dx.doi.org/10.3390/ijerph19106135 Text en © 2022 by the authors. https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/Licensee MDPI, Basel, Switzerland. This article is an open access article distributed under the terms and conditions of the Creative Commons Attribution (CC BY) license (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/).
spellingShingle Article
Giansanti, Daniele
Siotto, Mariacristina
Parisi, Laura
Aprile, Irene
Pet Presence Can Reduce Anxiety in the Elderly: The Italian Experience during COVID-19 Lockdown Assessed by an Electronic Survey
title Pet Presence Can Reduce Anxiety in the Elderly: The Italian Experience during COVID-19 Lockdown Assessed by an Electronic Survey
title_full Pet Presence Can Reduce Anxiety in the Elderly: The Italian Experience during COVID-19 Lockdown Assessed by an Electronic Survey
title_fullStr Pet Presence Can Reduce Anxiety in the Elderly: The Italian Experience during COVID-19 Lockdown Assessed by an Electronic Survey
title_full_unstemmed Pet Presence Can Reduce Anxiety in the Elderly: The Italian Experience during COVID-19 Lockdown Assessed by an Electronic Survey
title_short Pet Presence Can Reduce Anxiety in the Elderly: The Italian Experience during COVID-19 Lockdown Assessed by an Electronic Survey
title_sort pet presence can reduce anxiety in the elderly: the italian experience during covid-19 lockdown assessed by an electronic survey
topic Article
url https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC9142058/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/35627672
http://dx.doi.org/10.3390/ijerph19106135
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