Pets can help people with mental illness: study

Having a pet can help people manage their long-term mental health conditions by providing them an immediate source of calm and therapeutic benefit, a new study suggests.
In the study, the consistent presence and close physical proximity of the pets was described as providing an immediate source of calm and therapeutic benefit for the pet's owners.
"The people we spoke to through the course of this study felt their pet played a range of positive roles such as helping them to manage stigma associated with their mental health by providing acceptance without judgement," said lead author Helen Brooks from University of Manchester in the UK.

"Pets were also considered particularly useful during times of crisis. In this way, pets provided a unique form of validation through unconditional support, which they were often not receiving from other family or social relationships," said Brooks.
Researchers interviewed 54 participants, aged 18 and above, who were under the care of community-based mental health services and had been diagnosed with a severe mental illness.
Participants were asked to rate the importance of members of their personal network including friends, family, health professionals, pets, hobbies, places, activities and objects, by placing them in a diagram of three concentric circles.

Anything placed in the central circle was considered most important; the middle circle was of secondary importance and the outer circle was for those considered of lesser importance.

Pets played an important role in the social networks of people managing a long-term mental health problem, as 60 per cent placed their pet in the central most important circle and 20 per cent placed their pet in the second circle.
The participants stated that one reason for this was that their pet helped by distracting them from symptoms and upsetting experiences such as hearing voices or suicidal thoughts.
The interviews supported existing evidence that some participants feel distanced from health-care and uninvolved in discussions about services.
Taking more creative approaches to care planning, such as incorporating discussions about pets, may be one way of helping to better involve participants because of the value, meaning and engagement that individuals have with their companion animals.

"Despite the identified benefits of pet ownership, pets were neither considered nor incorporated into the individual care plans for any of the people in our study," said Brooks.
"These insights provide the mental health community with possible areas to target intervention and potential ways in which to better involve people in their own mental health service provision through open discussion of what works best for them," Brooks added.
The study was published in the journal BMC Psychiatry.