A new study published in the CABI journal Human-Animal Interactions suggests that companion animals—including dogs, cats, fish and birds—do not significantly benefit the emotional health of owners with severe mental illness.
• Sample size of 170, which even the researchers admitted was low
• First study done during the lockdowns, which they posited may have had a negative affect as people tried to cope with financial stress, sudden social isolation, and caring for a pet without ever leaving the house. It did, they found.
• Second study taken post-lockdown, unable to compare depression and anxiety as they did not bother measuring those the first time (why not?)
• Trained animals do provide a benefit, actually; friendly obedience and a relaxed personality found in support animals suggested to be a factor but they never measured that either I guess.
• 95% report greater life consistency and a sense of love, so maybe pets are helpful for someone in vital need of emotional support, we don’t know.
Overall, I think if they tried really, really hard, and I mean really put their minds to it, they could write a worse headline for such an ambiguous and unhelpful article.
I’d consider a sample size of 170 to be pretty large, if the sample was drawn with perfect randomness from the population. But this one wasn’t, it was self-selected. Also wasn’t a clinical trial, and while they seem to know what they’re doing with setting up the questionnaire, I would assume it would result in larger measurement error, which would need more samples to be able to correct for.
Completely agree with you though - the conclusions that it seems reasonable to draw from this are ‘not much, really’. Seems to disagree with the results of a larger study by many of the same authors, too, which say that companion animals did result in a smaller decline in mental health during lockdown.
• Sample size of 170, which even the researchers admitted was low
• First study done during the lockdowns, which they posited may have had a negative affect as people tried to cope with financial stress, sudden social isolation, and caring for a pet without ever leaving the house. It did, they found.
• Second study taken post-lockdown, unable to compare depression and anxiety as they did not bother measuring those the first time (why not?)
• Trained animals do provide a benefit, actually; friendly obedience and a relaxed personality found in support animals suggested to be a factor but they never measured that either I guess.
• 95% report greater life consistency and a sense of love, so maybe pets are helpful for someone in vital need of emotional support, we don’t know.
Overall, I think if they tried really, really hard, and I mean really put their minds to it, they could write a worse headline for such an ambiguous and unhelpful article.
I’d consider a sample size of 170 to be pretty large, if the sample was drawn with perfect randomness from the population. But this one wasn’t, it was self-selected. Also wasn’t a clinical trial, and while they seem to know what they’re doing with setting up the questionnaire, I would assume it would result in larger measurement error, which would need more samples to be able to correct for.
Completely agree with you though - the conclusions that it seems reasonable to draw from this are ‘not much, really’. Seems to disagree with the results of a larger study by many of the same authors, too, which say that companion animals did result in a smaller decline in mental health during lockdown.
https://journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371/journal.pone.0239397