Child Anxiety Lowered by Petting Dogs? Study Suggests Ice-Breaking Effect

Dogs are known as man's bestfriend. For a long time now they have taken on various precious roles for mankind: a companion, a guide to the blind, and also a means for therapy. Now, a recent study has found that they are able to help prevent or lessen the anxiety that kids may have.

"Childhood anxiety is a huge mental health problem in the U.S. and anything we can do to mitigate anxiety or prevent its development would have a huge impact on the mental health system in the United States," study author Anne Gadomski, a research scientist and attending physician at Bassett Healthcare Network, told CBS news.

Gadomski and her colleagues found that children in homes with pet dogs had lower anxiety scores compared to kids in homes with no pet dogs. The study is published in the journal Preventing Chronic Disease of the National Center for Chronic Disease Prevention and Health Promotion.

The researchers looked into data coming from 643 kids, (aged between 6 and 7) from which 370 kids had dogs and 273 didn't. They found that among the kids who had dogs, 12 percent tested positive for clinical anxiety. Among those who didn't have dogs, 21 percent were tested positive.

"What we actually found was children from homes with pet dogs had lower anxiety scores than children in homes with no pet dog," Gadomski said.

"It may be that less anxious children have pet dogs or pet dogs make children less anxious,” Gadomski added.

The researchers noted that the study is more into associations, thus more research is needed to look into cause-and-effect relationships.

Gadomski, who as a pediatrician for the past three decades, said that the idea for the research came from her own observations.

 "I've always been impressed with how a baby's first words are often a pet's name," she said. "Or when a pet dies, we see there's this incredible attachment there with children."

Gadomski explained that they looked into a canine's health benefits on kids due to the fact that kids aged 7 to 8 usually ranked their pets as better comforters and providers of self-esteem. She added that animal-assisted therapy using the help of dogs usually benefit a child's mental health by “reducing anxiety and arousal or enhancing attachment."

"Because dogs follow human communicative cues,” she said, adding, “they may be particularly effective agents for children's emotional development."

"A pet dog can stimulate conversation, an ice-breaking effect that can alleviate social anxiety via a social catalyst effect," Gadomski's team wrote while not ruling out the possibility of other pets bringing similar effects.

"It doesn't mean that cats can't do the same thing," she said.