Innovative dog therapy for mental health

AdminJanuary 27, 2024

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Patients admitted to the hospital’s pediatric and adolescent ward on October 12 in Madrid were able to benefit from the Inspiradog pilot project. therapy with a dog improving youth mental health. Despite the success achieved, according to the medical workers of the center, lack of funding caused his temporary paralysis.

Coordinated by URJC’s Department of Animal and Society Studies in conjunction with the hospital’s Department of Child and Youth Mental Health, this project aims to achieve various goals to improve the situation in which these young people suffer.

The first one humanize the hospital stay admitted teenagers. Secondly, make it easier feeling of isolation what they may feel at certain moments, and thirdly, struggle with Emotional problems and the social problems they suffer from.

“At such moments, boys and girls think that they are useless“who have no future and who do not see a way out of their personal situation,” explains Nuria Maximo, coordinator of the department, who also received the first Travel Guau award for the best responsible initiative with animals with Inspiradog. Canine therapy has helped improve the mental health of hospitalized patients.

“This visit not only teaches them about the lives of dogs and the professionals who care for them, but also opens doors for these young people that could ultimately help them see a future. In this way, they will be able to see that there is something more behind the personal situation that each of them is experiencing,” says Nuria Maximo.

Inspiradog, in addition to dog-assisted therapy, also aims to create expectations for the future for patients with mental health problems and at the same time provide alternatives to education and work related to the world of dogs.

Ana Jimenez, a child psychiatrist at the 12 October Hospital, says the project is “very beneficial” for patients. “This will help them improve your moodtheir anxiety, their ability to self-regulate both emotionally and behaviorally and even improve their ability to communicate with others,” he states.

Therapy dogs aimed at caring for the mental health of patients from 12 to 18 years old.

The pilot project of dog-assisted therapy in a psychiatric ward was carried out between September and December 2023 and consisted of two clearly differentiated stages.

The first was that connection. During this stage, also referred to as treatment adherence, youth had their first contact with animals in the care setting and it was expected that this first connection would be positive.

In second place was group phase. In this case, group work was encouraged, giving greater importance to the emotional dimension, which explored themes such as connecting and building relationships, self-care, impulsivity and self-control, as well as anxiety and returning to calm.

This group stage had a maximum of 10 participants and patient ages ranged from 12 to 18 years.

“The idea is to make the teenagers feel comfortable and not have it be another stressor,” recalls Maximo. “But first of all, we try to give them work strategies to the professionals who are next to them: psychiatrists, nurses, occupational therapists… In this way, so that from the seed that we plant in our sessions, they can then extract all possible fruits,” insists the department coordinator.

At these stages, experts in the field Clinical Psychology and Animal Assisted Interventions, as a guide dog handler. The dogs with which the pilot experiment was carried out were named Alma and Vera, and they came from the medical center “Bitácora Psicologia y Bienestar”.

Lack of funding led to the fact that this project was temporarily paralyzed. “The health workers, the boys and girls, asked us to come back, and we would like to, but for this we need financial funding,” recalls Nuria Maximo.

Alarming data on youth mental health

The mental health of children and adolescents has deteriorated and is approaching alarming levels.

Specifically, one in seven people aged 10 to 19 suffers from a diagnosed mental health problem.

Moreover, depression, anxiety and behavioral disorders are leading causes of illness and disability among adolescents.

Moreover, although several years have passed, the pandemic has aggravated this situation and caused an increase of up to 47% of mental disorders in minorsaccording to the Spanish Association of Pediatrics for 2022.

In Spain in particular, there has been an increase in the percentage of the young population who very often say they have mental health problems. According to the latest data from the 2023 Youth Health and Well-Being Barometer, 35.5% He says he suffered from panic attacks “very often” during the semester.

This applies to teenagers, but overall 6.7% of the Spanish population suffers from anxiety, and the same number of people suffer from depression. According to the latest data from the National Health Survey, in both cases women suffer from such problems more than twice as often (9.2%) as men (4%).

According to Nuria Maximo, these data show that “society is not preparing these young people for the emotional intelligence that is so necessary in life.” “So given that they have this turning point, which is adoption, animals can at least help them open doors, get to know themselves better, be able to regulate themselves and find meaning in what’s happening to them.” – he says.

Other projects with animals in the hospital October 12

This project is not the only one that the Institutional Chair of Animal and Society Research of the URJC has implemented in this hospital in Madrid. Actually it’s the second one.

The first one was called “Huellas de Colores” and started in 2019. It continues to this day and involves performing the same type of assisted interventions on dogs, but in a pediatric intensive care unit.

During the implementation of this project, visits were made to patients aged average 14 years have undergone surgery or have complications the development of his illness. In this case, the dogs involved in the process were rescued.